Convert PDF to Black and White

Drop your PDF into the converter above, choose Grayscale or Black & White, check the preview and click Convert to black and white. Then download the new PDF. It runs in your browser and usually takes less than a minute.

Use the converter on this page. It's free, has no watermark or page limit and needs no account. Your file is converted inside your browser, so it's never uploaded.

Grayscale turns every color into a matching shade of gray, so photos and charts keep their detail. Black & White makes all text and lines pure black and turns scanned pages into crisp black and white, which uses the least ink and gives the smallest files. Filled boxes stay gray so text on them remains readable.

Yes. Colors are converted to real gray values inside the PDF, so printers can print everything with black ink only instead of mixing color inks.

Usually, yes. Color images are stored as gray images, which take a third of the space before compression. Scanned pages in Black & White mode shrink the most, because each pixel becomes a single bit. The result screen shows the old and new file size.

Yes. Text colors are changed inside the PDF instead of turning pages into pictures, so the text stays selectable, searchable and sharp at any zoom.

Yes. Scanned pages are converted to grayscale, or in Black & White mode to clean black and white. Use the Darkness slider if the text looks too light or the paper too dark.

On a Mac you can open the PDF in Preview, choose File > Export, pick PDF as the format and select Black & White or Gray Tone under Quartz Filter. Or use this page in Safari or Chrome, which also keeps text selectable and lets you convert only certain pages.

Yes, automatically. Pages with a dark background, like a PDF converted to dark mode, get a white background and dark text again, so they're ready to print. Photos on those pages keep their normal look.

Yes. Choose Only these under Pages to convert and enter pages or ranges like 1-3, 8. The other pages stay in color.

Yes. Everything runs in the phone's browser. On iPhone, tap Save PDF and choose Save to Files when it's done.

No. Once the colors are removed they can't be restored, so keep your original color PDF. The converter always creates a new file and never changes the original.

PDFs that need a password to open can't be converted. Remove the password first. PDFs with editing restrictions are converted page by page as images, so their text won't be selectable.