What are some good methods to finding a heuristic for the A* algorithm?

You have a map of square tiles where you can move in any of the 8 directions. Given that you have function called cost(tile1, tile2) which tells you the cost of moving from one adjacent tile to another, how do you find a heuristic function h(y, goal) that is both admissible and consistent? Can a method for finding the heuristic be generalized given this setting, or would it be vary differently depending on the cost function?