Skip to content

Grayscale PDF

Runs in your browser

Use this page to convert PDF to grayscale for cheaper printing, and keep real text selectable where the file allows.

Drop PDFs here or choose files

Files stay on this device. Nothing is uploaded.

How to use Grayscale PDF

1
Choose one or more PDFs, or drop them on the page
2
Leave Keep text sharp selected, or pick Convert everything to images
3
Click Convert to grayscale and download
Several files download together as a zip.

Keep text sharp changes the colors inside the page itself: colored text, lines and shapes become the matching shade of gray, and color pictures become grayscale pictures. Text stays real text, so it prints crisply and you can still search and copy it.

A few things cannot be changed that way, such as color gradients and spot colors. When a page has them, just that page is turned into a grayscale picture, and the result tells you which pages.

Convert everything to images always works, but every page becomes a picture, so text can no longer be selected or searched.

Questions people ask

Usually not. Photos and pages turned into pictures are stored as compact grayscale JPEG, while drawings and small images stay lossless so their edges stay crisp. If the result does come out larger, the result screen says so and shows both sizes.