I'm bored, so I made a tutorial. LOL. Only my second one ever, let me know if its helpful. Made in PS7.
go from
to this: 
ok, so crop the picture as you wish to get a base, then go to Filter --> Sharpen --> Sharpen. From there, go to Edit --> Fade Sharpen, and fade to 50% opacity. Then, Filter --> Sharpen ---> Sharpen Edges. Then again, Edit --> Fade Sharpen --> fade to 50% opacity. I do this for almost all my icons.
Anyway, so I got this for a base:
Then, (and these next two steps are something else I do with pretty much all of my icons), duplicate the base layer, and set it to Screen, 100%
Duplicate the base again, put the new layer on top, and set it to soft light, 60% opacity:
Now the fun stuff! Ok, so, first off, set this gradient (if someone knows who I can credit, that'd be GREAT) on Multiply 100%.
Next, take this gradient (again, don't know whose), and set it to Hard Light, 90%. It will be a little hard to see their faces, but we'll fix that in a minute.
Ok, so, to make sure we can still see Luke and Lorelai, duplicate the soft light layer from earlier and drag it on top of everything:
Better right? Now, take one last gradient (once again, don't know who to credit. I suck.), and set it to Color, 20%. I rotated it so the lightest part was in the upper left corner, but that will depend on your picture.
Now for the finishing touches. I took this light texture from
awmp and rotated it so it was on the left side, and set it to hard light. I felt that it looked best placed underneath the reddish gradient layer, but that was just my preference.
Finally, I added some tiny text. No arguments, please. I typically use Arial, size 2, Anti-Alias set to none. I used a white font here, but again placed the layer underneath the reddish gradient layer because I thought it looked best there. Play around with the spacing on whatever you type out until it looks like you want it to, and you have your finished product!
Hope this was helpful to someone, and I'd love to see what people come up with. :)
go from
to this: ok, so crop the picture as you wish to get a base, then go to Filter --> Sharpen --> Sharpen. From there, go to Edit --> Fade Sharpen, and fade to 50% opacity. Then, Filter --> Sharpen ---> Sharpen Edges. Then again, Edit --> Fade Sharpen --> fade to 50% opacity. I do this for almost all my icons.
Anyway, so I got this for a base:
Then, (and these next two steps are something else I do with pretty much all of my icons), duplicate the base layer, and set it to Screen, 100%
Duplicate the base again, put the new layer on top, and set it to soft light, 60% opacity:
Now the fun stuff! Ok, so, first off, set this gradient (if someone knows who I can credit, that'd be GREAT) on Multiply 100%.
Next, take this gradient (again, don't know whose), and set it to Hard Light, 90%. It will be a little hard to see their faces, but we'll fix that in a minute.
Ok, so, to make sure we can still see Luke and Lorelai, duplicate the soft light layer from earlier and drag it on top of everything:
Better right? Now, take one last gradient (once again, don't know who to credit. I suck.), and set it to Color, 20%. I rotated it so the lightest part was in the upper left corner, but that will depend on your picture.
Now for the finishing touches. I took this light texture from
awmp and rotated it so it was on the left side, and set it to hard light. I felt that it looked best placed underneath the reddish gradient layer, but that was just my preference. Finally, I added some tiny text. No arguments, please. I typically use Arial, size 2, Anti-Alias set to none. I used a white font here, but again placed the layer underneath the reddish gradient layer because I thought it looked best there. Play around with the spacing on whatever you type out until it looks like you want it to, and you have your finished product!
Hope this was helpful to someone, and I'd love to see what people come up with. :)