I've got some more tutorials over at my icon journal that I thought I'd share. These were designed using Adobe Photoshop CS, but I know some parts of them translate to earlier versions. I don't know if they'll work in PSP. They are image heavy. I was kind of in a rush when I wrote these, so if there are any mistakes or something doesn't make sense please let me know and I'll fix it or try to explain better. I hope these help someone.

I use masking and blending a lot when making icons to put objects on bases or on different backgrounds and to blend two or more images together. These are some methods showing you how to achieve these effects.

(Masking out backgrounds and using the Extract filer) -  Shows general method of masking to remove background, using the Extract filter to remove an object from a background to place on another background, and using alpha channels to create a mask to preserve details of edges when masking.


(Blending images using gradients and the feather command)