How to Make a PDF Black & White — Free

Updated for 2026

Printing in color is costly and some archives want monochrome. Turn a PDF fully grayscale in your browser.

Quick answer: Open the grayscale tool and click. Every page is rendered in black & white — note this rasterizes pages, so it's best for scanned/print PDFs.

Make a PDF grayscale — free, in your browser

When to grayscale

Printing — monochrome is cheaper and often required.
Scanned documents with faint background tints.
Archiving where color isn't needed.

Step-by-step

Open the grayscale tool.
Choose your PDF.
Click “Make grayscale” and download.

Important boundary

This tool rasterizes each page (text becomes an image). For already-scanned PDFs it's ideal. For text-only PDFs the output is often larger than the original and text is no longer selectable — keep your original.

FAQ

Will the file get smaller?

Often not for text-only PDFs — pages are rasterized into images. It shines on already-scanned files.

Does it keep print quality?

Pages render at 1.5x scale, which is good for printing.

Can I undo it?

No — the page becomes an image. Keep your original PDF separately.