Black & White PDF

Black & White PDF turns colour PDFs into greyscale or pure black and white. Greyscale is for saving colour ink, for printers set to black only, and for offices and courts that ask for grey documents. Pure black and white is for the stricter rules: fax services, some print shops and submission portals that accept only one-bit black-and-white pages.

Greyscale keeps your text as real text wherever it can. Instead of photographing each page, the tool changes the colour instructions inside the PDF to the matching grey, and turns photos and logos grey, so text stays sharp and selectable and the file stays small. Some colour can’t be changed that way, such as gradients, spot colours and unusual picture types. Those pages are redrawn as grey pictures at the resolution you choose, every converted page is then checked for any colour left, and the result tells you exactly how many pages kept their text.

Pure black and white always redraws the chosen pages as pictures with a darkness slider, so text on those pages can no longer be selected. You can convert several PDFs with the same settings and keep chosen pages, like a colour cover, untouched. It all happens in your browser; nothing is uploaded.

1. Tap “Choose PDFs” and pick one or more files. The first one opens in the before and after view.
2. Under “Turn it into” choose Greyscale or Pure black & white. For black and white, set Darkness and, for photos, tick “Keep photo shading as dots”.
3. Leave “All pages”, or choose “Only some” and type the pages to convert, so a colour cover can stay as it is.
4. Check the preview, then press “Make greyscale” or “Make black & white”.
5. Press “Download PDF” (or “Download all” for a ZIP), or the ↓ button next to any file.

• Greyscale that keeps text, lines and shapes as real, selectable vectors.
• Photos turned into true one-channel greyscale pictures, not grey-looking colour ones.
• Every converted page checked for leftover colour; any page that fails is redrawn grey.
• Pure black and white at 150, 200 or 300 dpi, with a darkness slider and optional dithering.
• Before and after view, drawn from your new file once it is converted.
• Several PDFs in one go, downloaded one by one or together as a ZIP.
• Convert only some pages and leave the rest in colour.
• Runs in your browser with no upload, sign-up or watermark.

• For saving ink, Greyscale is almost always the better choice: it keeps text selectable and files small.
• If a fax or portal rejects grey, use Pure black & white at 200 dpi, which is standard fax resolution.
• Faint pencil or light blue text can vanish in black and white; move Darkness towards Darker and watch the preview.
• Tick dithering for pages with photos, and leave it off for plain text, which comes out cleaner without it.
• Pages redrawn as pictures can make a file larger; Compress PDF can shrink it afterwards.