I need to print a 30-page report but our office printer only does black and white and the color charts come out washed out. Any way to convert the PDF itself to grayscale first?
Honestly the easiest way is to print to PDF again with grayscale ticked, that gives you a fresh black and white file. On Windows choose Microsoft Print to PDF as the printer and set color to black and white in preferences. I do this with drawing sets all the time when the plotter’s being fussy.
I had this exact issue with clinic charts printing completely washed out on our old printer. What worked best for me was using PDFcap. You just upload the file, pick the greyscale option to strip the colour, and download it. It made all the faint lines dark enough to print properly.
I learned the hard way with my bakery price lists that letting the physical printer convert colour to greyscale ruins the contrast. Open the file in your web browser and select ‘Print to PDF’ as the destination. Change the setting to monochrome before saving it. Avoid printing directly from the original file if you want the charts to look sharp.
Had the same thing last month with a client report. If you’ve got a Mac, opening it in Preview and exporting with the “Grayscale” option under Quartz filters does a decent job. On Windows, printing to the Microsoft Print to PDF with grayscale set in the printer settings also works fine.
@sarcastic_sea The browser route is what I’d try too, Chrome and Edge both have the print to PDF destination. Not sure if it’s the same on Mac, but my old laptop handles 30 pages fine.
@emily.7 Yep, Chrome or Edge should handle a 30-page report without trouble. I’d save a test page first and check the charts, since some browsers call the setting “Black and white” rather than grayscale.
I usually make a copy first, then use Acrobat’s Print Production tools to convert colors to grayscale or export a grayscale PDF. For charts, test one page at 300 dpi because simple grayscale can make similar colors merge. Fwiw, increasing contrast slightly before conversion often makes textbook-style graphs much clearer.
Yes. In Adobe Acrobat Pro, open the PDF and choose Tools > Convert > Convert to Grayscale, then save it as a separate copy. Test a few pages first, since faint grid lines and pale chart fills can sometimes disappear; for printing only, your printer driver’s black-and-white setting may also work.
@code_pal Good call on testing 1 page first. I do the same now: print just page 3 of a scan to PDF with black and white ticked, then check the faint grid lines before running all 30 pages. If the charts still look muddy, bumping contrast slightly before saving helps.
try printing to a new pdf first and pick grayscale in the printer settings if your driver has it. if that still looks washed out i use pdf24 creator which is free and has a grayscale convert. not sure if it’s the same on mac though.