Tutorial
Okay. First of all, I take a screencap (mostly from here) and paste it into PSP9. If you don't have this, most of it should be able to be translated into PSP7 at least. I don't know about other programmes 'cause I've never used them. If you have problems getting it to work in PSP7 I can try to help as I still have that. :)
I wouldn't advise following this directly once you've got the hang of it - have a play around, be adventurous!
1.
See here, I've cropped the image down to a square at its original size. Some like to start at 100x100 but I never can make it look okay when I do that. So I work at varying sizes.
Oh and when you crop, try and make it at an interesting place instead of right in the middle. It makes a big difference to the icon, I swear. Play around. Here I've made Xander be in the focus instead of both of them.
2.
I duplicate the layer, then set the layer setting to screen as above. I provide a screencap because until like, a week ago I didn't know that was possible. Haha. So pathetic... I then duplicate the screen layer until it's at the kind of colour that I want. Don't worry if it looks kinda bad at this level.
3.
Merge all the layers, then resize the image to 200x200. Either use the soften brush or use this on PSP9, which it just wonderful. Fiddle around with the settings until it looks okay, but it changes every time with each image so be careful.
4.
Resize it to 100x100, then sharpen it either once or twice. No more than that or it'll look (quite frankly) ugly. This once is a little over-sharp but it'll do. (Which isn't something I often say, but this is just a tutorial)
5.
Make a new layer and fill it with dark blue. Then set that layer to 'exclusion' if there is skin in the image, or 'screen' if not. I've found sometimes one looks better than the other, and exclusion makes skin pretty and dull like I adore.
6.
For the final touch, I use picture frame. Most of them are tacky but I love this painbrush outline effect, as you may have notice if you've seen any of my recent icons. If you don't have this on PSP7 or whatever you are using, just use a 3px white border around the outside. Any tiny text should be the same colour as the border and placed in a random-ish place where it is plainly visible in the dark shades.
7.
Like so. And it's done. Save as a .png and you're set to go!