I have encountered many designers and art directors who aren’t aware that there is another way to convert images from color to black and white in Photoshop. Most people simply go to Image > Mode > Grayscale and call it done. There is a better way! It only takes two minutes using adjustment layers, and you’ll see a noticeable difference in the sharpness and quality of your black and white images.

Step 1. Open your image, and bring up the layers palette. Click the adjustment layer button at the bottom of the layers palette (circle shape half white/half black). Select Hue/Saturation from the dropdown.

Leave the settings as is, for now.

Step 2. Click the adjustment layer button again, to add a second adjustment layer. This time, with the top layer selected, you will go to the Adjustments palette, and drag the saturation slider all the way to the left (-100).

Step 3. Now, select the first adjustment layer you created (it will be the middle layer in your document). Click the layer blending mode at the top of the layers palette (by default, it will say normal). Select “color”.

Step 4. In the Adjustments palette, drag the Hue slider back and forth until the image looks good to you.

That’s it! Let’s compare the results:

Original image:

Grayscale:

Converted with adjustment layers:

I’ve had the pleasure recently to do work for Sharespost, a startup in Santa Monica that tracks pre-IPO startups like Facebook, Twitter, Tesla Motors, and Zynga. This week, we built the world’s first Dow-like tracker for pre-IPO startups, which is getting no shortage of press:

AP: Dow industrials for startups? Pre-IPO index opens

Forbes: SharesPost Launches Index

Bloomberg: Facebook Valued at $11.5 Billion in SharesPost Index

I recently watched Helvetica, the documentary from Gary Hustwit. It’s a beautifully shot film about, what else, the ubiquitous Helvetica typeface.

Here’s a short excerpt from the film:

I watched the movie through Netflix, but it will also be airing on the PBS show Independent Lens on January 6.

As someone who finds himself unable to drive down the street without spotting poor typographical choices on signs and billboards, this film was a welcome open discussion into the world of typography and the psychological effect that it has on society.

I use Helvetica in a great deal of my work, as a result of my desire to create clean and efficient designs. Helvetica Neue is one of my favorite typefaces. One of the benefits of a font like Helvetica, I believe, is the freedom to combine it with a multitude of other typefaces, for effect. Helvetica provides the order and consistency, allowing for a second typeface to provide character. It was the strategy I used in designing this portfolio site, which uses Helvetica extensively.

The challenge for the designer is to be able to incorporate design trends into solid design practices. A designer who lives strictly by trends will find that their work looks outdated in only a few short years. But solid, timeless design principles prove that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Helvetica is 50 years old, and used now as much as ever. It’s the perfect font for the Web 2.0 design sensibility.

The most interesting debate in the film is the ongoing debate between designers who embrace Helvetica, and those who make rebelling against Helvetica a past time. Yes, I’m talking about David Carson.

Way back in design school, we had a project where we had to visually represent two antonyms through design. I chose order and chaos. If Helvetica is order, David Carson is chaos. As exemplified by his desktop:

It’s the next cover of Raygun! I kid, I kid. However, it is a nice look into Carson’s brain. This organization of information on his desktop very likely makes perfect sense to him.

This is the where the fun starts. With all of the restrictions of web technologies, and presentation of information, where can these two roads meet? With the popularity of blogs, and the requirement that text be laid out in a very simple grid, is chaos going to become non-existent?

I’m looking forward to experimenting, and seeing forthcoming designs that attempt to explore this marriage of antonyms.