Tutorial - Colouring with Gradiants with Dr. James E. Wilson.
Made with PSP 7, Transferable.
Before:
After: 
For beginners and people who hate curves. (Or anyone, really.)
Here's a very simple but effective colouring technique I used on my Wilson Icons a few posts back. Even though I did use curves on that batch, it's not 100% nessasary to use them. You can create a similar effect by substituting a couple different gradiant layers in place of a curves adjustment layer. I know people don't like gradiants much either, but I don't think anyone will argue that they are less troublesome than curves. I created this icon specificly for this tutorial, so if you'd like to take it (as simple as it is), feel free too so long as I get some credit. Feedback is welcome. Feel free to add this journal for updates.
1. Crop your base from the screencap, (this one I got from 
stelladives) and resize it to 100x100. Duplicate the layer.
2.
Sharpen the TOP LAYER ONLY and then set the layer blend mode to screen at 100% opacity. Merge the two layers.
3.
Paste this gradient 
as a new layer over your base and then set the layer blend mode to hue at 50% opacity. (The difference between step 2 and 3 is very subtle, I know. But trust me on this. You'll see soon enough.)
4.
Duplicate the base layer and place it over the top layer. Then set the layer blend mode to burn at 20% opacity.
5.
Paste this gradient 
as a new layer on top and set it's layer blend mode to exclusion at 33% opacity.
6.
Duplicate the base layer once more and place it on top of the other layers. Set the layer blend mode to overlay at 40% opacity. You should have 5 layers at this point.
7. To add the border, merge all of the layers into one and resize your icon to 90x90 pixels. Sharpen the image. Then click on Image>Add Borders and input these settings:
Symmertic box is checked.
Top: 5
Bottom: 5
Left: 5
Right: 5
Make sure #FFFFFF is set as your background color if you want your border to be white.
And you're done!
Before:
After: For beginners and people who hate curves. (Or anyone, really.)
Here's a very simple but effective colouring technique I used on my Wilson Icons a few posts back. Even though I did use curves on that batch, it's not 100% nessasary to use them. You can create a similar effect by substituting a couple different gradiant layers in place of a curves adjustment layer. I know people don't like gradiants much either, but I don't think anyone will argue that they are less troublesome than curves. I created this icon specificly for this tutorial, so if you'd like to take it (as simple as it is), feel free too so long as I get some credit. Feedback is welcome. Feel free to add this journal for updates.
1.
Crop your base from the screencap, (this one I got from stelladives) and resize it to 100x100. Duplicate the layer.2.
Sharpen the TOP LAYER ONLY and then set the layer blend mode to screen at 100% opacity. Merge the two layers. 3.
Paste this gradient as a new layer over your base and then set the layer blend mode to hue at 50% opacity. (The difference between step 2 and 3 is very subtle, I know. But trust me on this. You'll see soon enough.) 4.
Duplicate the base layer and place it over the top layer. Then set the layer blend mode to burn at 20% opacity.5.
Paste this gradient as a new layer on top and set it's layer blend mode to exclusion at 33% opacity.6.
Duplicate the base layer once more and place it on top of the other layers. Set the layer blend mode to overlay at 40% opacity. You should have 5 layers at this point. 7.
To add the border, merge all of the layers into one and resize your icon to 90x90 pixels. Sharpen the image. Then click on Image>Add Borders and input these settings: Symmertic box is checked.
Top: 5
Bottom: 5
Left: 5
Right: 5
Make sure #FFFFFF is set as your background color if you want your border to be white.
And you're done!