Some (hopefully) helpful tricks & tools

Hi, everyone! This is my first tutorial, but it's not an *official* full icon tutorial. It's just to demonstrate a few of the tricks I use in my icons. We'll be using this base of the lovely Olivia Wilde:
(by onstage)

1. Brightness & Contrast (Adjust --> Brightness and Contrast --> Brightness/Contrast)
I set the brightness at 15 and contrast at 20, but you can experiment to see what works for you. Result:

2. Digital Camera Noise Removal (Adjust --> Photo Fix --> Digital Camera Noise Removal)
This tool will give your icon a sort of dreamy, floaty effect. Here are the settings I used:

Result:

The image is looking a little dull, so after the noise removal I would probably boost the contrast a little, so that it would be dreamy but still vibrant.

3. Fade Correction (Adjust --> Color Balance --> Fade Correction)
If you're not a contrast person, Fade Correction is a good alternative. It brightens up the image without making skin tones look too glaringly red. I set Amount of Correction at 100, but it all depends on your image. Result:

4. Gaussian Blur (Adjust --> Blur --> Gaussian Blur)
This one takes a little more time than the others, because it's not a one-step process. First, duplicate your background layer twice.

Then, put a Gaussian Blur on the middle layer (looks best with Radius set between 2 and 4). Don't be put off by the preview image - it doesn't look anything like the final product.
Next, set the top layer to Overlay or Soft Light (I find Overlay looks best, but some people prefer Soft Light). Sometimes things come out looking a little blurrier than they should, in which case you should lower the opacity on the middle layer until it looks good. Here's my final settings and the result: