Can't get my scans open in Photoshop 2025 - says incorrect color space = ??? It's just a B&W scan.

+ it tries to open as a previw instead of the pdf...

By @NTC Ann

Normally, Photoshop should have no problem opening a PDF file, so that’s odd. When you say “it tries” does that mean the scan successfully opens in Apple Preview, or it tries to open in Preview but fails?

If it wants to open in Preview, you can always open it in Photoshop manually, using any of these methods:

• Drag the file, and drop it on the Photoshop application icon or Home screen.
• In Photoshop,  choose the command File > Open and select that file and it should open in Photoshop.
• In the Mac Finder, select the file in its folder window or on the desktop, and choose File > Open With > Adobe Photoshop.

I am trying to get it open in Photoshop 2025 because I want to save it as a jpg or pdf file but it won't let me.

By @NTC Ann

If it won’t open in Photoshop but it will open in Preview, you can do that conversion there too. In Apple Preview, if the file is open there, choose File > Export, and choose JPEG. JPEG is one of the formats Preview can export to. (Not sure why you want to save it as PDF since it already has a PDF filename extension.)

I would expect a scanner to default to RGB. However, you may have something else set to create the PDF that Photoshop doesn't like. Photoshop can open Grayscale and 1-bit files; perhaps this is indexed grayscale or something unsupported. Without inspecting a copy of the PDF or seeing a screenshot of your scanner settings, including the colour mode and file format options, it's hard to comment.

Try Apple Preview.app