Grayscale or Pure Black & White: Differences and When to Use Each
Key points
- Photos, figures and colored tables: grayscale
- Text-only documents: pure black & white
- If unsure, grayscale
Convert a PDF to Grayscale offers two modes.
Grayscale
- Keeps shades of gray from white to black.
- Good for photos, graphs, colored tables and figures.
- Areas of different colors remain distinguishable by darkness.
- Files tend to be larger than pure black & white.
Pure black & white
- Only two colors, white and black.
- Text is crisp, good for copying and fax.
- Pale text or lines may disappear.
- Photos look grainy.
How to choose
- Reports, contracts, text-only documents: pure black & white.
- Material with photos, graphs, slides: grayscale.
- Tables that use color to carry meaning: grayscale.
- Sending by fax: pure black & white.
If unsure
Try grayscale first and look at the preview. If text looks pale, try pure black & white. The original is unchanged, so you can redo it as often as you like.
Use "Convert a PDF to Grayscale (Black & White)" (free)Tools that go well with this
- Compress PDF: Shrink a PDF to fit under a size you choose, for upload limits.
- Combine PDF Pages onto One Sheet (2-up, 4-up): Arrange several PDF pages on one A4 sheet (2, 4, 6, 8 or 9 up) to save paper when printing.
- PDF to Images: Save each page of a PDF as a JPEG or PNG image.
More guides for this tool
- How to Convert a PDF to Grayscale for Free (Works on Phones)
- Making Color Documents Readable in Black & White Printing
- Making a PDF Black & White Before Fax or Copying
- PDF Got Bigger After Converting to B&W? How to Reduce the Size
- Making Scanned Documents Black & White: Readability vs. Size
- Troubleshooting Monochrome PDFs: Faint, Broken Text, Cannot Select Text