Overlayed Texture
Requested by someone on Livejournal, the process of this icon:
I'm going to start with the following image.
Desturate it....
...And go to Image-> Adjust-> Gradient Map. Photoshop will take the two colors in your palette, and if they aren't black and white already, you can click to gradient and choose the black to white gradient. This'll make your lights lighter and darks darker.
Duplicate your image layer, and Gaussian Blur it, I used about 2.1 pixels. Set that layer to Multiply and choose an opacity around 50%. Merge the layers.
Now I took the circle marquee tool, set to Constrain Aspect so it makes a perfect circle, and made one where I wanted the image to show. Go to Select->Inverse and fill that area with black.
Move your image to where you want in. Make sure it's under the layer with the black. I also sharpened my image using Unsharp Mask.
Duplicate the image layer and shrink it a little. Then use the Circle Marquee again to make a circle around it, try for one that makes the smaller image look like the bigger. When you like it, Ctrl-X, Ctrl-V. Now it's on it's own layer. Move it under the black layer but on top of the original image, and move it to your liking.
Now take whatever color you'd like, I used a bright magenta, and using a size 10 or 20 soft edge brush, make a splotch on a new layer and set the blend mode to Lighten.
Use this texture by gender for the flowers. To make it show up white, go to Image->Adjust->Invert and then set the blend mode to screen. Put it on the top layer, and shrink it so it isn't too overpowering and lower the opacity if you need to.
Since those are in the way now, use Group with Previous so that it would only show up overtop on the black and not the image. If your program doesn't have that, hold down Ctrl and click on the black layer, then do Select->Inverse and press delete.
As a finishing touch, TINY TEXT! :DD
And done! I really gotta start saving my .psd files, it would make my life so much easier.