How to print a PDF in black and white — and save ink

Colour ink and colour pages at a print shop cost more than black and white, and drafts rarely need colour. There are two ways to get a black-and-white print, and they suit different situations.

Option 1: the print dialog

Most printers offer a greyscale or black-and-white option in the print dialog, sometimes under “more settings” or the printer's own properties. For printing a document yourself, this is the quickest route and keeps the original file unchanged.

Some printers still use colour ink to make greys look richer even in greyscale mode. If you want to save colour cartridges specifically, look for a setting that prints with black ink only.

Option 2: convert the file

Make a black-and-white copy of the PDF itself when:

• a print shop charges by colour page and will print exactly what you send;
• a submission must be supplied in black and white;
• you want to check how the document looks in grey before printing many copies.

1. Add the PDF to Convert PDF to Grayscale.
2. Choose Standard for ordinary documents, or Print for small text and fine lines.
3. Press Convert and download the black-and-white copy. The original is untouched.

Every page is converted using weights that match how the eye judges brightness, so colours that look equally bright become similar greys. The paper size and margins stay exactly the same. One trade-off: the pages are re-drawn as pictures, so their text can no longer be selected or searched. Keep the colour original for that.

Check charts and highlights

Conversion keeps brightness, not colour. A red line and a green line of similar brightness become nearly the same grey, and a yellow highlighter mark may almost disappear. Before printing a document with charts:

• look at the converted pages and check every chart's lines and bars can be told apart;
• where they cannot, add labels or use different line styles in the source document;
• replace pale highlights with bold or underlining if they carry meaning.

The same idea applies to single images: the Black and White Image Converter offers a high-contrast mode that makes photographed text easier to read in grey.

Save more paper

For drafts and handouts, combine greyscale with printing two or four pages per sheet using Multiple PDF Pages Per Sheet, and print double-sided. A 40-page colour report printed 2-up, double-sided and in greyscale uses ten sheets and no colour ink.

File size

A converted file can be larger than the original, especially for text documents, because pictures take more space than text. If you only need the file for printing, that does not matter. If you need to email it, Standard resolution keeps it smaller than Print.