Skip to the converter

PDF to grayscale, without the upload.

Turn the colours of a PDF into grays for printing or reading, keeping text as text and the pages as they are. Contracts, payslips and ID scans stay on your device.

  • Free, no sign-up
  • Pictures to gray too
  • Counts what it left

Drop a PDF to make gray

or choose from your computer paste with Ctrl V

Ready · PDF files · several at once0 bytes uploaded, ever

How to make a PDF grayscale

  1. Add your PDF

    Drop it above or choose it.

  2. Choose the pictures

    Pictures can turn gray too, or stay as they are.

  3. Download the grayscale copy

    Press Make grayscale and save the file. The result says if anything was left in colour.

What stays and what doesn't

Colours become grays in the page itself. These are the things that do not come along to the new file:

  • the PDF/A mark

A digital signature is removed, only after you say so: any change to a signed file breaks the signature, so the file is held back until you choose to continue.

Print, copy and edit restrictions are removed, only after you say so: the file is held back until you choose to continue.

When it won't run

Five things stop a run before it writes anything, and each is said on the file's row. A PDF that needs a password asks for it there, and a wrong password is refused with a sentence that says so. A digitally signed PDF is held back until you choose to continue, because making it gray would break the signature. A file that cannot be read is reported as damaged. A job too large for this device says so, and in every case nothing is changed and your original stays as it was.

  • The PDF opens, but its owner has switched off printing, copying or editing. Making it gray would remove those restrictions.Remove the restrictions and continue
  • A whole number of pixels from 1 to 16383.
  • This PDF has no colour, so there is nothing to change. Your file is unchanged.

Making a PDF grayscale: what to expect

The colours in text, lines, shapes, gradients, form fields and pictures are rewritten as grays, with the usual weights for red, green and blue. The pages are not turned into pictures, so text stays text and the file does not grow.

Some colour sources are hard to rewrite. A JPX picture, a mesh gradient, a picture that is masked by a colour or a colour the tool cannot work out stays in colour. When that happens, the result tells you how many.

Grayscale is not the same as black and white: the tones stay, they only lose their colour. A CMYK colour follows the formula in the PDF standard, so a strong cyan can look lighter than it does on screen.

Questions

Are my PDFs uploaded?

No. Your PDFs are processed inside your browser, on your own phone or computer, and saved straight from this page. The reading at the top of the page counts every byte sent, and it stays at 0 B.

Is the result black and white?

No. It is grayscale: the tones stay and the colour goes.

Does the file get bigger?

No. Pages are not turned into pictures, and a JPEG is converted without being decoded where it can.

Can it miss a colour?

A few kinds stay in colour, like a JPX picture or a mesh gradient. The result counts them.

Can I keep the pictures in colour?

Yes. Choose to leave the pictures as they are, and only the colours of the page itself turn gray.

Can I make the file smaller as well?

Yes. Use Compress PDF on the result.

More PDF tools

All PDF tools

Other things to do with a PDF

All tools