Tutorial: Black and White icon

This tutorial explores spiffying up black and white images. Where a lot of colored icons can stand out on their own because the coloring effects are the main feature of the icon, black and white images often rely on effects to bring out the advantages of the black and white. Otherwise it can end up looking too flat. So:

Start with your base. Robert Sean Leonard's gorgeously gorgeous eyes are the subject of this icon, and since I felt that coloring would actually take the focus away from his eyes, I chose to make the image black and white. Using black and white also gives the image a stark feeling that colored icons can lack.

Before even desaturating the image, I brightened it using a Curve layer:

I didn't feel it was bright enough yet, so I used another Curve layer:

So now our image looks like this.

To desaturate the image, I set my color palette to black and white (black being the foreground and white being the background) and created a Gradient Map (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map). We now have:

It's still a little flat so I used another Curves Layer:

I created a new layer and Stamped Visible (Shift+Ctrl+Alt+E). I then used the Burn Tool to darken the darker parts of his eyes and a little bit of his eyebrows.

Now, that would be a rather dull icon if left like that. I wanted to draw attention to his eyes but still leave his hair in the picture, so I created a new layer and filled it with black (#000000). Then I took the Eraser Tool, set to 110 px, hardness 100%. I changed the opacity of the black-filled layer to 78%, and used one click with the Eraser Tool to make a circle in the black layer, starting just where his hair ends. I then went to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, radius 9.5.