PDF to Black and White
Turn a color PDF black and white, ready to print without color ink or to send where grayscale is required. Choose shades of gray or high contrast. Text stays real text, and the file never leaves your device.
Your file is ready
- Files stay on your device. Nothing is uploaded.
- Free, no sign-up, no daily limit.
- Works with Wi-Fi off once the page has loaded. Check it yourself
Updated by Khokhar Sab
How do I convert a PDF to black and white?
Press Choose a PDF. Pick Shades of gray to keep every tone, or High contrast for crisp black text when printing. If the PDF has images, choose whether to keep their full detail or make the file smaller. Press Convert to black and white, check the preview and press Download. The original file is not changed.
- Press Choose a PDF.
- Pick Shades of gray or High contrast.
- For images, choose Keep full detail or Smaller file.
- Press Convert to black and white, then Download.
How are colors turned into gray?
Each color becomes a gray of the same brightness, weighted the way eyes see it: 29.9% of the red, 58.7% of the green and 11.4% of the blue (ITU-R BT.601). Green looks brightest, so it becomes a light gray; blue looks darkest. High contrast then sends grays darker than 45% to black and lighter than 80% to white.
| Color | Shades of gray | High contrast |
|---|---|---|
| Black text | 0% | 0% |
| Dark blue heading | 20% | 0% |
| Pure red | 30% | 0% |
| Link blue | 33% | 0% |
| Green | 43% | 0% |
| Pale yellow highlight | 95% | 100% |
Will the text still be searchable?
Yes. Many converters turn each page into a picture, which makes text blurry and stops search and copy. This tool rewrites only the color settings inside the PDF, so letters stay letters at any zoom. Images are the exception: they become gray pictures, as they were pictures already. The file usually stays about the same size or shrinks.
Need the file smaller too? Pick Smaller file here, or use Compress PDF, which can also make a PDF black and white.
Why print a PDF in black and white?
Color printing uses color ink or toner, so printing color pages in gray saves it. A form or office may also ask for grayscale documents. A black and white PDF also shows how a page will look on a black-only printer before you print, so faint colored text can be caught early.
For a dark screen version instead, try Invert PDF Colors.
Limits and fixes
- Color gradients (shadings and patterns) and spot colors cannot be rewritten as gray. After converting, the tool looks at each page that has them, and a page that still shows color is saved as a gray picture of itself. Its text can then no longer be selected; the result screen names those pages.
- CMYK and JPEG 2000 images are drawn in your browser and turned gray like any other image.
- Locked PDFs need their password removed first with Unlock PDF.
Frequently asked questions
Is it free?
Yes, with no sign-up, no watermark and no daily limit.
Is my PDF uploaded?
No. It is converted in your browser.
Is black and white the same as grayscale?
In printing, yes: both mean no color. High contrast here is closest to pure black and white.
Can I turn the colors back?
No, keep the original. The gray copy holds no color information.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes, in current browsers on iPhone and Android.
Related PDF tools
How this tool was built and tested
- ITU-R Recommendation BT.601: the brightness weights for red, green and blue
- ISO 32000-1 (PDF 1.7), section 8.6, Colour spaces: the color settings the tool rewrites
- pdf-lib, Cantoo fork (MIT), version 2.11.1