Grayscale PDF
Convert all pages of a PDF to black & white (grayscale).
- Free, no sign-up
- No watermark
- Files deleted automatically
or drop a file here · paste with Ctrl+V
Up to 1 GB
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About Grayscale PDF
Grayscale PDF converts every colour in a PDF — text, images and graphics — to shades of grey. Use it to preview how a document will look on a black-and-white printer, to save colour ink, or to meet submission rules that ask for black-and-white files.
The conversion is done with Ghostscript and keeps text as real, selectable text. Colour photos often take less space once converted, so the file may also get smaller.
How to use Grayscale PDF
- Upload the colour PDF.
- Press Convert to Grayscale.
- Download the black-and-white version.
Key features
- Converts text, images and vector graphics
- Text stays selectable and searchable
- Page orientation kept as it was
- Often reduces file size for image-heavy PDFs
When to use Grayscale PDF
- Checking how a document will look on a black-and-white office printer before printing many copies.
- Meeting portal or exam rules that ask for black-and-white scans.
- Making colour scans of text documents smaller.
Tips and common problems
- Coloured stamps, signatures in blue ink and charts that use colour for meaning lose information in grayscale — check them before submitting.
- Light colours such as yellow highlights can become almost invisible in gray.
- For the biggest size reduction on scans, also reduce the image resolution — see our guide on reducing PDF size.
Frequently asked questions
No. Only colours change; text remains real text that you can select and search.
The whole document is converted. To convert some pages only, extract them, convert them, and merge the PDF back together.
No — colour information is removed. Keep your original file.
Guides
- How to Reduce PDF Size for Online Form Uploads — Why PDFs exceed upload limits (200 KB, 1 MB, 2 MB) and the methods that really shrink them: compressing scans, grayscale, removing pages and splitting.