Shiny Blobs
The title doesn't sound very appealing, but trust me, this effect can look VERY pretty when used correctly for iconing. And what's great is that it can be used on ANY program so long as it allows for the use of brushes, layers and blend modes :)
All you need is an image:
View Image (Courtesy of Aethereality)
Crop, resize, edit to your liking. Then, grab the brush tool and make the settings so that it is a soft, round tip at whatever size you want. Bearing in mind that if you make the size too ridiculously small/large it's not really gonna have the desired effect.
Choose a color. Actually, choose TWO. Let's push the boat out ;D Set your background and foreground colors to whatever colors you want that will suit your image, like I have done:
And then, create a new layer at the top and just simply 'blob' the colored brushes on. You can alternate between sizes, opacities, colors and so on. Be sure not to cover any part of the image that you want to stand out (like the face of the subject for example). Once you've got the desired amount of blobs on (you can put as much or as little as you want), your image will look somewhere along the lines of this:
Not very pretty, but that's where the wonderful, handy feature known as 'change blend mode' comes in. Simply switch the blend mode to either screen or lighten and voila! There you have it, pretty shiny blobby effects ;D You're then free to do whatever other editations you want/need. You might find you need to erase some parts where you want the original image to show through more clearly. Or, if the blob layer is making the overall image too light, you can always flatten and then go to Image > Adjustments > Auto Contrast. Hope you found the tutorial helpful. Here's my final result:
And here's the finished icon after I add some more various effects and stuffs:
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