A Gimp Tutorial..
Gather round kiddies, cause here is a GIMP tutorial (gasp!) on how to go from this 
to this
..
So I decided to use this picture of Sarah Michelle Gellar and made a base out of it by cropping and resizing..
I don't have a copy of my original base.. (Sorry..) But it looked something like this..
I thought it looked a little blurry, so I sharpened it by going to the Filters menu, then to Enhance and finally Sharpen.. I sharpened it by 10..
This was my result..
I then duplicated that base twice, and set the middle layer to Screen, and the top layer to Overlay..
So far, I have this..
Then, because I'm crazy (this happens a lot), I made another duplicate layer (of the base) and put a blur on it.. I went through the Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur IIR.. I also used the Eraser at 50% opacity and erased around the blurred layer's eyes, nose, lips and a bit of hair.. (See? Crazy..) I have this layer right on top of the background layer, and below the screen and overlay layers..
I wound up having this..
Then I decided to start playing around with gradients and their blend modes.. I wound up getting lucky, and finding something I really like.. I applied two gradients I made, which I placed between the blurred and the screened layers..
The green/yellow gradient I set to Overlay at 100% opacity.. And the light blue/light purple gradient I set to Divide at a 75% opacity..
It now looks like this..
I then added a couple of brushes.. One I made by myself, attempting to make light textures (which btw, didn't work out)..
I placed it to the side, so it wouldn't block Sarah's face.. I set it to Screen.. I placed this layer right below the screened copy of the base..
I also used this brush, which I did not make, and have no idea who did.. If you do, let me know..
Anyhoo, I used this brush in white, placed it on top of everything and set it to Overlay.. I thought it didn't stand out enough, so I duplicated the layer, but lowered the opacity to 50%.. (See the crazy kicking in again?)
We now have this..
Last but not least, I added some tiny text, because I'm so trendy.. Heh.. I chose to use the font Arial in white at size 4, and placed it to the side, with my brush.. I decided that the lines of my text were too far apart, so I fixed the Line Spacing to -3.0.. (If you're morbidly curious, the text is lyrics from the song "Blue" by Angie Hart.. She wrote it for Buffy the Vampire Slayer..)
Ta dah! The icon is done.. :)
BTW, I made a point of saying where all the layers were placed because I moved them like crazy, and the color looks really different..
Please let me know what you thought.. Comments, both positive and negative, are welcome..
This is also available at icon_tutorial..
to this
..
So I decided to use this picture of Sarah Michelle Gellar and made a base out of it by cropping and resizing..
I don't have a copy of my original base.. (Sorry..) But it looked something like this..
I thought it looked a little blurry, so I sharpened it by going to the Filters menu, then to Enhance and finally Sharpen.. I sharpened it by 10..
This was my result..
I then duplicated that base twice, and set the middle layer to Screen, and the top layer to Overlay..
So far, I have this..
Then, because I'm crazy (this happens a lot), I made another duplicate layer (of the base) and put a blur on it.. I went through the Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur IIR.. I also used the Eraser at 50% opacity and erased around the blurred layer's eyes, nose, lips and a bit of hair.. (See? Crazy..) I have this layer right on top of the background layer, and below the screen and overlay layers..
I wound up having this..
Then I decided to start playing around with gradients and their blend modes.. I wound up getting lucky, and finding something I really like.. I applied two gradients I made, which I placed between the blurred and the screened layers..
The green/yellow gradient I set to Overlay at 100% opacity.. And the light blue/light purple gradient I set to Divide at a 75% opacity..
It now looks like this..
I then added a couple of brushes.. One I made by myself, attempting to make light textures (which btw, didn't work out)..
I placed it to the side, so it wouldn't block Sarah's face.. I set it to Screen.. I placed this layer right below the screened copy of the base..
I also used this brush, which I did not make, and have no idea who did.. If you do, let me know..
Anyhoo, I used this brush in white, placed it on top of everything and set it to Overlay.. I thought it didn't stand out enough, so I duplicated the layer, but lowered the opacity to 50%.. (See the crazy kicking in again?)
We now have this..
Last but not least, I added some tiny text, because I'm so trendy.. Heh.. I chose to use the font Arial in white at size 4, and placed it to the side, with my brush.. I decided that the lines of my text were too far apart, so I fixed the Line Spacing to -3.0.. (If you're morbidly curious, the text is lyrics from the song "Blue" by Angie Hart.. She wrote it for Buffy the Vampire Slayer..)
Ta dah! The icon is done.. :)
BTW, I made a point of saying where all the layers were placed because I moved them like crazy, and the color looks really different..
Please let me know what you thought.. Comments, both positive and negative, are welcome..
This is also available at icon_tutorial..