Grayscale PDF
Take the colour out of a document, so it prints in black and white.
Drop files here
Or paste them, or pick them from this device. Nothing is uploaded: the work happens in this tab.
Files in this tab
Nothing is loaded yet.
Remove the colour
Add a file to get started.
What this does
This converts a document to greys, which is what you want before sending it to a printer that charges by the colour page, or when colour carries no information anyone needs. Photographs come back neutral, text and vector drawings are converted properly rather than being drawn through a grey filter, and anything that cannot be converted safely — a named ink, a pattern, a shading — is reported rather than guessed at.
What it will not do
Every tool here says what it cannot do, in its own words, before you rely on it.
- A photograph stored as a JPEG comes back a JPEG with every pixel neutral. It still carries three channels, because no browser codec writes a one-channel JPEG — storing it uncompressed instead would be several times the size.
- Named inks, patterns and shadings are left as they are. Guessing at the grey each was meant to be is how a print job comes back wrong, so the report says when one was met instead.
- An image written into the page itself, rather than stored beside it, is left in colour.
- Colours are converted with the standard luma weights and no colour management, which is what a viewer with no profile shows.
Questions people ask
Why did some colour survive?
Named inks, patterns, shadings and images drawn directly into the page content are left as they were, because guessing at the grey each was meant to be is how a print job comes back wrong. The report says exactly what was met and left.
Will this make the file smaller?
Usually a little, and it is not the point. A JPEG photograph comes back as a JPEG with neutral pixels, still in three channels, because no browser codec writes a single-channel JPEG. For size, use Compress PDF.
Is my file uploaded anywhere?
No. The work happens in this browser tab, on your own machine. There is no server in this product to send a file to, which is why the promise is checkable rather than something you have to take on trust: open your browser's network panel and watch it do the work without making a request.
Is there a size limit, or a limit on how many files?
None that we impose. The limit is your own machine's memory, because that is where the work happens — a few hundred megabytes is comfortable on a laptop, and less on a phone. There is no daily task counter, no queue and no account.
What does it cost, and what is the catch?
Nothing, and there is no paid tier that unlocks features: the whole product is the free one. That is affordable because running it costs us nothing — your computer does the work — so there is no per-file cost to recover, no advertising and no data to sell.