PDF to Greyscale

Convert a colour PDF to black and white. Useful for reducing colour ink usage when printing or for archiving.

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Files stay in your browser No sign-up required Works on any device

How to convert a PDF to greyscale

Upload your PDF, choose a render quality, and click Convert. Each page is rendered through a canvas which removes all colour, then saved as a new PDF.

When is this useful?

  • Printing on a black and white printer — greyscale PDFs print faster with less ink.
  • Archiving — smaller file size for long-term storage.
  • Accessibility — some readers find high-contrast greyscale easier to read.

Note on file size

Because this method renders each page as a JPEG image, the resulting file may be larger than the original for simple text documents. It works best on image-heavy or colour-heavy PDFs.

Privacy

All processing is in your browser. No file is sent to any server.

Frequently asked questions

Common questions about this tool.

Will text still be selectable?

No — because the page is rasterised to an image, text will not be selectable in the output. For text-heavy documents, this is a trade-off.

Why is the output larger than the original?

Each page is saved as a JPEG image, which can be larger than vector PDF content. Use 72 or 150 dpi to keep size manageable.

Does this work on scanned PDFs?

Yes — scanned PDFs are already images, so the conversion works well.