This is just a generalized icon tutorial, nothing fancy. You'll learn how to make an icon like this in Photoshop 6+:

I started with this screencap of C.J. Cregg from the West Wing episode "Lord John Marbury":

I selected the part I wanted with the rectangular marquee tool, then copied & resized until I had a 100x100 pixel base, like so:

I duplicated that base image 4 times, so I had five layers of it. I set the top two layers to screen, the next two to overlay, and the bottom layer to luminosity, which gave me this:

I like how that looks, but it's not got quite enough contrast for what I have in mind, so I selected the top screen layer and ran it through the brightness/contrast filter with settings of brightness=+26 contrast=+31, and wound up with this:

It looks good, but it's a little blurry around the edges, so I selected the bottom screen layer and ran it through sharpen more, then ran the upper screen layer through sharpen, which gives us this:

Then, I picked up two colors of peach from her face [#fddfcb & #bf765d]. I created a new layer on top of everything else, and did a gradient fill with those two colors:

Well, that's all pretty and everything, but gradients aren't meant to obscure the pic, so I set it to multiply, and lowered the opacity to 90%:

I like that. It's nice and clear and everything, but there's no texture to it. So I pull out a trusty texture brush and in a new layer, took #bf765d and did a texture layer. I set it to color burn, and reduced the opacity to 40%:

I created a new layer, and did a border brush in #fddfcb, then set that to hard light at 65%:

Now, for text. I'm going to use one of the most-repeated "insults/compliments" ever quoted from "West Wing" [IE., paranoid Berkeley shiksa feminista]. So, I do the first three parts of the quote in #fddfcb, in font Felix Titling at 8 pts., with a strong anti-alias. I then set it to soft light:

It's nice, it's pretty, it's soft -- and very difficult to read. So I add a drop shadow to that, in black, with settings of 3 distance, 3 size, and 75% opacity:

It's still pretty hard to see the text and read it clearly, so I duplicated the text layer(s) once:

Now it's time to finish this puppy up! I chose to finish the quote in #fddfcb, in Angelina font, 18 pt., with a strong anti-alias. I set that to soft light:

I added a drop shadow in black, set to 3 distance, 2 size, 75% opacity:

And lastly, I duplicated the text layer:

Et voila. All finished.

Brushes used in this tutorial: