adobe photoshop - What is the name of this effect, and what is a good way to replicate it?

See how the image background fades with the black menu bar? I see this effect very often and I like it a lot. I would love a tutorial (either Photoshop or Illustrator) or how-to article but I don´t even know how to search for it.

Answer

As farray said, its halftone pattern, there are many ways of creating the same,

You can see this guide for halftone pattern(this is quite hard and long)

but you can also create this using Photoshop filters within minutes, i have posted a SS to make it clear to you,

(open in new window for clarity) you can use this before your image just put this layer and reduce it's opacity. Hope this will help..