This is another basic, run of the mill icon tutorial for Photoshop6+.

Well, I'm bored. So I wanted to make an icon that shows just how bored I am. So, I chose this pic to show my boredom.

So, I cropped the pic and resized it to 100x100 pixels.

It's way too dark for my taste, so I duplicated the base layer 4 times, and set the top three layers to screen, the next layer to overlay, and the bottom layer to luminosity. It's great, but I don't like how blurry it was, so I ran the three screenlayers through sharpen more, and got this:

Now, I started off wanting to do it in a red, white and blue kind of fashion, so I created a layer between the overlay layer and the bottom screen layer, and did a red and blue gradient like this:

Which looks like this on the icon:

It looks... well... it wasn't what I was expecting, so I played around. On top of the uppermost screen layer, I put another red and blue gradient.

I set that gradient to difference, and got something I really liked.

Now, it's time for a little texture. I used a diagonal blinds brush in the dark blue from the gradients and set it to difference.

That's great, but it's not quite enough, so I duplicate the blinds layer and set it to 50% opacity.

Now, I picked up the pale green from the shirt and did a border brush in it. It looks like so:

Bleargh! That looks pretty damn sucky, imho, so I played around a bit and eventually set it to screen at 50%, and it looks good.

I took the same green and did the first layers of text in it. I used Cheapskate Fill as my text and set it to luminosity.

Well, I wasn't quite satisfied with it, so I dulicated each text layer and set the duplicate layer to color burn. Oooh, pretty! And that, my friends, is the finished icon.

All of my brushwork is done at 50% opacity for this icon. Play around and find an opacity you like! :-)

Brushes used in this tutorial: