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Things have been changed since I last visited these settings. I am wondering if the pictured setting will meet your needs for the grey-scale conversion:
For image down-sampling, I have always approached these settings in Distiller itself, not Acrobat. But you can always create a custom preflight profile (or copy one that already exists), and modify it to your needs:
I hope this info is useful.
My best,
Dave
Hi Dave,

Thank you for your reply.

Some email servers of my clients won’t accept emails with attachments over 4 MB in size. So I used the two settings I mentioned in my previous post to compress the PDF attachments when I didn't want to use Dropbox or WeTransfer, and when the quality of the PDFs didn't matter, but the text must have been still readable.
In Acrobat X, first I removed the color from the PDFs ("Convert to greyscale") and then I downsampled them ("Downsample image resolution to 150 ppi").
In Acrobat Pro DC, some warnings occur when I use "Digital printing (B/W)". Do they matter in my case?
I'm not certain whether those errors will hold you up or not. There's only one way to know, and that is to run a test of the entire process.
I did have another thought that might prove helpful for you. If you have a PDF open in Acrobat, and you go to File>Save As... , you can change the file type from 'Adobe PDF Files (*.pdf)' to 'Adobe PDF Files, Optimized (*.pdf)'. Once selected, then click on the Settings... button. You should then see all sorts of downsampling options that you can apply on your Save As. If this works, you can save your customized preset to use again and again.
I hope this is helpful.
My best,
Dave
You are almost there.
First, save-as any pdf as an optimized pdf and save your settings, see attached screen shot with suggested settings. When you set up your action, use the saved setting.
For converting to BW, try using the Preflight Fixup- Convert color to BW.
Sorry, I should have said Save as other> Optimized PDF. When the optimize settings window appears, adjust the settings and click the save button in the settings window and give your settings a name. Use this setting in your action.
The preflight is under Tools> Print Production> Preflight> Fixups (the blue wrench icon)> Color Spaces, Spot colors, Inks.
At the top of the Preflight window it should say "Acrobat Pro DC 2015 Profiles". You can try the Color to B/W or Color to grayscale preflight.
Since converting color to BW can be subjective, Photoshop has tools for better control of the conversion when you need to make a critical conversion.
Another method it to use Print Production> Convert Colors>Convert to Profile> Dot gain 15%.
By selecting all of the Discard & Clean up options under your Optimize settings (unless there is something you specifically need to keep) your PDF size should be much smaller.
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