This is one of my first tutorials, and it's going to be a VERY simple one. I work in PSP8, but it should easily be translatable into other programs.


For this tutorial, we are going to go from THIS to in just a few easy steps.

First of all, you're going to want to crop it. I chose to crop with her slightly off center, and with the entire guitar being in the icon. This is the base I ended up with:


Okay, now we have a base, but it looks a little....dull, and flat. Very easy to fix! I went to Adjust>>Brightness and Contrast>>Brightness/Contrast with the settings Brightness: 5 Contrast: 15
Now I have this:


This could work very nicely as an icon on it's own, but I decided I wanted to spice it up a little. I created a new Raster Layer and I used this brush (I forget who made this brush, so if you know...please let me know). Now I've got this:


Again, nice on it's own, but I decided I wanted the sparkle to POP a little more. I made a copy of the brush layer. I kept it on Normal blend mode with Opacity 100%. It made the sparkle a little more bright:


Finally, I added a border and Viola, there you have it:


Simple and easy icon!