Grayscale PDF or pure black and white?
Most people who search for a black and white PDF want what printers call grayscale: pages made of black, white and every shade of gray in between. That is what FileKiwi creates.
| Grayscale | 1 bit black and white | |
|---|---|---|
| Colors used | Black, white and many grays | Only black and white |
| Photos | Look like gray photos | Turn into dots or patches |
| Light colored text | Light gray, still readable | May vanish or turn solid |
FileKiwi does not offer the strict 1 bit version. For documents with photos, logos or shaded tables, grayscale is usually the better choice anyway, and it is what most printers produce from a color file.
Good reasons to convert a PDF to black and white
- Printing at the office or library: many shared printers are black and white only, and a gray PDF shows what you will get.
- Saving color ink at home: some printers mix color ink into black pages unless the file itself is gray.
- School and office submissions: when instructions ask for a grayscale document, convert the final PDF instead of editing every chart.
Check charts after converting. Two lines that were red and green can turn into almost the same gray, so labels or patterns may be needed to tell them apart.
File size and other tips
A grayscale PDF is often a little smaller, but this tool is not a compressor. If you also need to meet an upload limit, run the gray file through Compress PDF afterwards.
FileKiwi converts every page. To print only part of a document in gray, pull those pages out first with Extract PDF Pages.
Scanning paper documents yourself? Most scanner apps can save in grayscale from the start, which gives smaller files than scanning in color and converting later. Keep the color original too, in case someone asks for it.