Wow, my first tutorial! With the delicious Suzaku-kun, no less. ^-^
A word of warning! Although I'm giving the specific values for each step followed, they will not work for every image. In fact, I change the values for pretty much every different icon that I use this technique on. Basically, I'm saying to not follow this tutorial exactly. You won't like the results, as they'd probably be pretty ugly.
A few quick tips before starting: don't sharpen your base until after following all the steps of the tutorial (you may not even need to), don't do everything on one layer (use adjustment layers, preferably within a layer set), and don't merge your layers (copy merged/paste, instead).
First off, let's start by following steps 01-04 of this set of tutorials by attempts @ nasplasha. This is a great way to prep bases, no matter what you do to the icon afterward. ♥
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02
Copy Merged (shft+ctrl+c) and paste (ctrl+v). Then use the Blur Tool (r) with a small/medium size at 40% opacity and lightly brush over the merged layer. Depending on the image, certain areas are given more attention than others, such as hair and facial features, but it's often good for clothing as well. Once that's complete, set the blurred layer on Soft Light; the opacity may or may not need to be adjusted (this one was not), it all depends on the image.
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03
Open a Layers adjustment layer. Remember, the values for this image - RGB: 31, 1.40, 250 - won't be the same for others. Oftentimes, I start by editing the Blue channel and work back toward RGB, though that isn't the case with this one.
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04
Open a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. For this icon, the Master Saturation was at +50.
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05
Open a Color Balance adjustment layer. For this icon: Midtones: +100, +10, -30
Shadows: +20, -10, -40
Highlights: -10, 0, +10
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06
Open a Channel Mixer adjustment layer; I tend to start with Blue and work back toward Red. For this icon: Blue: -2, -2, +108, -2
Green: -2, +106, -2, -2
Red: +106, -2, -2, -2
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07
Open a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer. For this icon: Brightness: +4
Contrast: +4
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08
Open another Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, working back from Magentas to Master. For this icon: Magentas: 0, 0, -20
Blues: -2, 0, -4
Cyans: -2, 0, +3
Greens: 0, 0, 0
Yellows: -5, 0, +3
Reds: +10, +5, -5
Master: -1, 0, -1
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And you're done, unless you want to sharpen it and such, in which case remember to copy merged/paste so you can lower the opacity of the sharpened layer if necessary. ^_~
Other icons using this technique (from this post):