Grayscale PDF
Turn a colour PDF grey so it prints as black and white. Most printers charge per colour page, and one logo in the header can make every page a colour one. Your text stays text, and the file never leaves this device.
Drop a PDF here, or click to choose
Your file stays on this device. Nothing is uploaded.
How to convert a PDF to black and white
- Drop the PDF onto the box above, or press “Choose a PDF file”. Converting starts straight away.
- Check the summary of what was changed and how the file size moved.
- Press “Download grayscale PDF”.
What Grayscale PDF does
Taking the colour out of a PDF so it prints as black and white, usually to stop a printer billing every page as a colour page because of one logo in the header.
What it does
- Rewrites the colour instructions inside the file, so text stays text and vector artwork stays vector
- Converts JPEG and Flate-compressed RGB images to grey
- Handles annotation colours too: link borders and highlights, which live outside the page content
- Reports how many images it could not convert, instead of implying it converted them all
What it does not do
- Rasterise the pages, which is how most greyscale tools work and how they silently destroy search and selection
- Convert CMYK photographs, indexed palettes, or images using a predictor; these are left alone rather than guessed at
- Put the colour back; keep your original if you need it
- Guarantee a smaller file; that is Compress PDF, and a text-only document barely changes
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Grayscale PDF: common questions
Why would I want a grey PDF?
Almost always money. Print shops and office printers bill per colour page, and they count a page as colour if there is any colour on it at all, so a blue logo in a running header turns a forty-page report into forty colour pages. Converting first makes it forty mono pages. The other common reason is a fax or a scanner workflow that only handles greyscale, and photo-heavy files do get somewhat smaller as a side effect.
Does this turn my pages into pictures?
No, and that is the main thing separating this from most greyscale tools. The easy way to build one is to render every page to an image and desaturate it: that always works and quietly destroys the document, leaving you a file you cannot search, select, copy from or have read aloud. This rewrites the colour instructions inside the PDF instead, so text is still text and vector artwork is still vector.
Some images stayed in colour. Why?
Because we would have had to guess at how they are stored, and a wrong guess corrupts the picture. Photographs saved in CMYK, images using an indexed palette, and anything compressed with a predictor are left exactly as they were, and the result panel says how many, rather than reporting success and letting you find out at the print shop. If the count is not zero and the file is going to a printer, look at those pages first.
Can I get the colour back afterwards?
Not from the converted file. Greyscale throws the colour information away (that is what makes the file grey rather than merely displayed grey), so keep your original. The tool never touches the file on your disk; it hands you a second copy.
Will it make the file smaller?
Sometimes, and it is not the point. A document that is mostly text will barely change, because the colour instructions it rewrites are a few bytes each. One full of photographs can shrink noticeably, since a grey image carries a third of the colour data. If size is what you are after, Compress PDF is the tool that targets it directly.