Sakura Tutorial!
Learn how to go from this to 
, free of charge!
Reletivly simple, image-heavy. I use Photoshop Elements 4.0, but should translate :3
So, we start with our base, which is in this case a manga scan of Sakura from the cover of chapter 244 of Naruto:
Crop your image. We should all know how to do this ;D
Then color it! I've written about how to color icons before, and there are many tutorials on it, but you basically set the lineart layer to "Multiply" and stick your color layers below it. After coloring your picture, flatten it. This is what I have now:
Next, I took this light texture by Lizabeth0606 :
and rotated it so that it wasn't covering up Sakura's face. I set it "Screen" at 50%. My icon now looks like this:
Now, gradients. For this icon, I just used ones found in Photoshop because I'm lame like that. So here's my first one:
Set it to "Overlay", 100%
My icon now looks like this:
Now for a second gradient. Yet another gradient that Photoshop came with:
"Soft Light", this time, and at 100%.
It'll look something like this:
Texture time! I used this texture by twisted_fruitie:
and set it to "Multiply", 100%, giving me this:
Duplicate your base, drag it to the top, and set it to "Overlay", 100%
You can leave it like that, or add in text and/or brushes. For this particular icon, I used the rectangular marquee tool on a new layer and filled it in white, and then wrote "Bliss" in #e84270, which was a color I took from the icon using the eyedropper tool, of course. The font I used was Garamond, 12pt.
And that's it! Remember to play around with gradients and stuff. You don't have to follow this word for word!
, free of charge!
Reletivly simple, image-heavy. I use Photoshop Elements 4.0, but should translate :3
So, we start with our base, which is in this case a manga scan of Sakura from the cover of chapter 244 of Naruto:
Crop your image. We should all know how to do this ;D
Then color it! I've written about how to color icons before, and there are many tutorials on it, but you basically set the lineart layer to "Multiply" and stick your color layers below it. After coloring your picture, flatten it. This is what I have now:
Next, I took this light texture by Lizabeth0606 :
and rotated it so that it wasn't covering up Sakura's face. I set it "Screen" at 50%. My icon now looks like this:
Now, gradients. For this icon, I just used ones found in Photoshop because I'm lame like that. So here's my first one:
Set it to "Overlay", 100%
My icon now looks like this:
Now for a second gradient. Yet another gradient that Photoshop came with:
"Soft Light", this time, and at 100%.
It'll look something like this:
Texture time! I used this texture by twisted_fruitie:
and set it to "Multiply", 100%, giving me this:
Duplicate your base, drag it to the top, and set it to "Overlay", 100%
You can leave it like that, or add in text and/or brushes. For this particular icon, I used the rectangular marquee tool on a new layer and filled it in white, and then wrote "Bliss" in #e84270, which was a color I took from the icon using the eyedropper tool, of course. The font I used was Garamond, 12pt.
And that's it! Remember to play around with gradients and stuff. You don't have to follow this word for word!