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Grayscale PDF: Turn Colour Pages Black and White

Free No Limits Batch Grayscale Private and Works Offline!

Choose PDFs or drag them in

PDF only · nothing is uploaded

Pick pages in the preview, or leave nothing picked to change every page.

Strength
%
Invert
See Original
Pages

.pdf
Total for all files
Original Size:—
After Grayscale:—
Size Change:—
Pages Changed: —
Text Preserved: —
Safety Checks Passed: —
About this tool

Grayscale PDF: Turn Colour Pages Black and White

Free No Limits Batch Grayscale Private and Works Offline!

100% client-side processing, so zero server uploads ever. Drop in one or more PDFs, choose the pages, and download them in grayscale, with your original text still selectable and searchable.

  1. 00

    What's great about our PDF grayscale tool

    • Your PDFs never leave your device. Every page is changed right in your browser.
    • Turn colour pages to grayscale, on every page or only the ones you pick.
    • A strength slider for a fully gray or a partly faded look.
    • Text, fonts and links are untouched, so text stays selectable and searchable.
    • Make many PDFs grayscale at once, with a ZIP download.
    • Free, no limits, no watermark, and it works offline after your first visit.
  2. 01

    Add your PDFs

    Choose PDFs or drag them into the preview. Use Add More to add others later. Click pages to turn to grayscale only some of them, or leave nothing picked to change every page.

  3. 02

    Choose the look

    Set the Strength. 100% makes every colour gray. The preview shows every changed page as it will be saved.

  4. 03

    Make Grayscale and download

    Click Make Grayscale, then Download. Change anything and the button goes back to Make Grayscale, ready for another run. Several PDFs download together as a ZIP.

  5. 04

    Loved it?

    • If you're on computer, bookmark this page to your browser.
    • If you're on mobile, add it to your home screen for one-tap access and offline use.
      • Android: Visit this page in Google Chrome > tap three-dot icon (⋮) at top > Install and create shortcut.
      • iPhone and iPad: Visit this page in Safari > tap menu icon in address bar > Share > Add to Home Screen.

How it works

A gray layer is laid over each page you chose, using a standard PDF blend that keeps the lightness of every colour and removes its hue. A white sheet is added behind the page first, so the blend always has paper to work with. The page itself is never redrawn, so text, fonts and links stay as they were.

After the file is made, it is opened again and compared with your original: the page count, text, rotation and links must all match what they should. If anything differs, no file is produced for that PDF.

Frequently asked questions

  • Is my PDF uploaded anywhere? No. Everything happens in your browser, on your device. Your PDF is never sent to a server.
  • Can I change only some of the pages? Yes. Click pages in the preview to pick them (or drag across several), use All, First, Last, Odd or Even, or type a range such as 1-3, 5. With nothing picked, every page is changed. Pages you do not pick stay exactly as they were.
  • Does this make the file smaller? No. The pictures stay as they are and the page is shown in gray, so the file size changes only a little. To make a PDF smaller, use Compress PDF afterwards.
  • Is the page turned into a picture? No. A gray layer is added over the page, so text, fonts, vector graphics and links stay exactly as they were, and the text stays selectable and searchable.
  • Why does the preview look the same as the saved file? The preview and the saved file use the same method, so what you see is what you get. A few old viewers show colour layers differently, so check the result in the viewer you plan to use.
  • What does Strength do? At 100% every colour becomes gray. Lower values keep part of the colour, for a faded look.
  • Can I turn the colour back on later? No. The gray is part of the page. Keep your original file if you might want the colour version.
  • Which PDFs are not supported? Password-protected PDFs cannot be processed. Remove the password first with PDF Password Unlock. Digitally signed PDFs can be processed, but rewriting the file invalidates the signature.

What happens to your file

Nothing is uploaded, stored on a server or tracked. Your PDFs stay in your browser's memory until you remove them or close the page. The gray becomes part of each page, so it cannot be switched off afterwards.

How to get the most out of it

  • Use Grayscale before printing on a black and white printer to see how colours will look.
  • Make the PDF smaller afterwards with Compress PDF.
  • To also flip light and dark, turn Invert 'On', or use Invert PDF Colors.
  • Keep your original file. The changes cannot be undone once the PDF is saved.

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