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Grayscale PDF

Convert PDF to black and white — saves printer ink and reduces file size.

Choose PDF to convert to grayscale

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Strip colour from a PDF for cheaper printing and smaller files

Colour pages cost 8–12× more to print on most office and home printers. Converting a PDF to grayscale before printing saves colour cartridges and often shrinks the file too. This tool rasterises every page through a greyscale filter so colour icons, highlighted cells, and coloured headers all come out as tidy shades of grey.

Common reasons to go grayscale

Printing lecture slides or textbooks without burning through colour ink
Economy printing jobs at print shops that charge per colour page
E-ink devices (Kindle, reMarkable, Boox) that don't render colour anyway
Archiving older scans where the faint colour tint just adds file size, not information
Reducing PDF size for uploads where colour isn't needed

How the conversion works

Each page is re-rendered at its original resolution through a luminance filter, then re-encoded as a grayscale JPEG inside the new PDF. That means heavy colour photos and charts shrink substantially, while plain black text pages stay roughly the same size and readability.

How to use this tool

Upload PDF.
Click Grayscale & Download.

Frequently asked questions

Will it shrink my file?

Usually yes — colour images compress to fewer bytes in grayscale JPEG. Expect 10–50% smaller for colour-heavy PDFs, and roughly the same size for pure-text documents.

Is the text still selectable?

No — pages are rasterised. If selectable text matters, use a desktop tool that applies a colour profile instead of raster conversion.

What about highlight colours and comments?

Highlights become grey shading, which usually stays visible against the text. Very light yellow highlights may fade — darken them before converting if readability matters.

Can I preview before downloading?

Not directly — but the output downloads in seconds, so open and check, then re-run if you want a different result.

Is anything uploaded?

No — everything happens in your browser. The PDF never leaves your device.