Participating Frequently

Question

Convert PDF to 100% black and white (NOT grayscale)?

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
March 11, 2021
5 replies
57948 views

Does Acrobat Pro have a way to convert PDFs to true black and white? When I look in the "convert colors" function in print production it has grayscale, but I don't see black and white as an option. I've been searching for fixes and every tutorial and question/answer I find only converts to grayscale; does Acrobat not have the capability to convert to ture black and white?

Edit and convert PDFs

J

jordan_9787

Participant

I couldn't figure out how to do it in Acrobat, but I was able to convert the file to a word doc and then go into the color scale in word, choose a black and white that worked with my background, and then convert that to a PDF.

K

kathleen_7434

Participant

I recall doing this in the late 1990s with a slider to choose the cutoff for readability and got clear black text on white with bit of black shadows in the corners. Dunno what program. Too bad Adobe cant be bothered.

M

mario27188307sq8h

Participant

I do not believe there is. I have an app called Snag It Editor. I had to save my pdf as images, and then click Color Adjustment. Worked like a charm. Hope this helps.

Abambo

Community Expert

Please see here… same remarks, more or less: https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/convert-pdf-to-100-black-and-white-not-grayscale/m-p/13352849#M387483

ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer

try67

Community Expert

Yes, it is possible. Here's how:

- Download this file (I can't attach it here directly, unfortunately).

- In Acrobat (Pro), go to Tools - Print Production - Preflight.

- Click Options - Import Preflight Profile and select the file you downloaded earlier.

- A new item will appear under Custom Profiles, called "Convert to B&W".

- Open your PDF file and then run this Preflight Profile on it by clicking on "Analyze & Fix".

- When it's done save the new file under a new name, and you're done!

S

sandrah80731053Author

Participating Frequently

I ran this through preflight, and it gave the response "Preflight profile "Convert to BW" did not find any errors or warnings", but it also didn't seem to change the file at all, it is still grayscale. My goal is to convert text scanned in grayscale over to 000000/FFFFFF and nothing else.

try67

Community Expert

I understood your request, and it's working well for me... Maybe the fixup it uses needs to be created manually.

Are you able to edit it? It's called "Convert color to B&W".

gary_sc

Community Expert

Hi Sandrah,

Just out of curiosity, what is your goal, what are you hoping to achieve?

FWIW, B&W and grayscale are almost synonymous. I say "almost" becuase absolute B&W means that all antialiasing is converted to black as well. This is text at 200% the top one has antialiasing the bottom one is converted to absolute B&W. Are you sure you want that?

S

sandrah80731053Author

Participating Frequently

I am aware that black and white means no shades in between, that's why I specified that I did not want grayscale. I want the only colors in the document to be 100% white and 100% black, aliasing is fine.

R

r_8076

Participant

It is very touching to see "professionals" support each other even when they are wrong... But you seem a little better than Gary, so you confirm that Adobe can't do what Google do for all his books on Google Books ? When Adobe will offer this option ? 2067 ?

By @Cerbo24878402260w

Sure, you can do any transform you want, but may be Acrobat is not the tool you should use for this.

I don't know what “Google does” for all “his” books. What I know is that in my 30+ years of professional services, I've never seen the need to do what has been asked, as this is best done on the output level.

Imagine a text in colour, the colour translate to greyscale: Red nearer to black, orange nearer to white. Now transform that into black and white only at a 50% threshold. The red text will be black, the orange text will be white. Simple. Orange text will disappear.

What I was asking for was if 49% grey is considered white or black, and the same for 51%, 55%, 45% and all values in between 0.0001% and 99.9999%.

That is a legitimate question and proves that probably the OP has asked the wrong question.

Greetings,

Your replies remind me of a TV commercial from the 80s where a guy wants to know how much for a duck call and the clerk keeps asking questions like "Do you want that giftwrapped or are you doing to take it with you?"

Let me help you overcome your commically frustrating obstinence in this case, however.

The US Patent and Trademark office will reject your submission if it includes a gray scale document.

Hope that helps - after 31 years of arrogance.

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