Pen's Nest

Thanks! As it happens, I do have some tutorials... there are quite a few that I've found useful linked in my memories, also, I wrote this one as a kind of "Let's get started":
http://community.livejournal.com/icon_tutorial/3280178.html
(I really should update that, I've moved on from a lot of the things I used to do - but it's a place to start.)
this as a "how to deal with text":
http://community.livejournal.com/icon_tutorial/3777901.html
(some of the examples are missing now)
and this is the Gradient Map one:
http://community.livejournal.com/icon_tutorial/6160740.html

As you'll see, they are all posted to icon_tutorial, which is where I picked up a great deal of useful info on how to use Photoshop. The majority of the tutorials are not particularly good, but you can get ideas from anywhere. It's pretty heavy traffic, so you may want to pop in for a look around rather than having it show up on your friends list, though.

And I recommend you join some of the icon challenge communities - it's a great way to get started, as you have a specific goal every week, and you can tell when you start to improve, because you start to win stuff! I basically joined the Lance challenge first, and then started to learn how to make icons...

lance_challenge, chasezchallenge and _nsyncchallenge are my regulars, but I'm sure there are several other pop ones, and plenty of more wide-ranging ones as well.