Word files with grayscale images convert to RGB upon PDFcreation

Report · Jun 05, 2017

I have Word 2013 documents with both grayscale and color images. However, when converting to PDF (either via Distiller or via the export process), the images end up being converted to RGB color space. Is there any way to force it to maintain the existing color space for the images when converting to PDF? If not, is there any way to have Acrobat fix the problem after the PDF is created (you can convert everything to grayscale, but you can't differentiate the images, which are all DeviceRGB.

Report · Jun 05, 2017

Hello solovyei,

Conversion to PDF via Distiller or Save As is controlled by a jobptions file and the default joboptions file is most likely set to "Standard" (or standard.joboptions). In the standard.joboptions file, the "Color Management Policies" is set to "Convert All Colors to sRGB" and this is the reason your grayscale and color images are being converted into RGB.

You can edit the standard.joboptions file "Color Management Policies" by opening Distiller > Settings > Edit Adobe PDF Settings and on the left hand pane select Color > Color Management Policies and set to "Leave Color Unchanged." Note that you might want to save as a new joboptions file instead of overriding the default standard.joboptions.

This should resolve your issue.

Hope this helps.

Joffre

Report · Jun 06, 2017

Joffre,

Thank you for the response. Unfortunately, I checked the Distiller settings, as we have a custom joboptions that we use. The color management policy is set to "leave color unchanged." We have noticed that, when printing to PDF, there is an option under Paper/Quality to change from color to black and white--and in that case, we can end up having everything grayscale. Right now our workaround is to put the document together and have Acrobat convert to grayscale and then bring back in the pages that have color. Other than the obvious labor-intensive nature of that workaround, it also leaves us sometimes having some grayscale images still RGB if they are on the same page as a color image.

Thanks,

Grant

Report · Jun 07, 2017

Hello Grant,

After spending sometime searching online, it seems the problem has to do with Word and not with the PDF conversion process.

MS Word uses RGB colorspace. Any images imported into a Word document - regardless of the colorspace, will be converted to RGB.

This is mentioned in a few pages such as the ones below:

RGB to CMYK Conversion for Color Printing | CMYK Color Explained

Does Microsoft Word Support CMYK Images?

Unfortunately there seem to be no colorspace controls in MS Word. It then makes sense that once you convert the Word document into PDF with the color management setting set to "leave color unchanged" the resulting PDF will contain RGB images.

Hope this information helps.

Joffre

Report · Jun 08, 2017

You can also use the Acrobat tool- Edit PDF. Select the RGB image, right click and choose Photoshop as the image editor. The image will open in Photoshop, go to Image> Mode> Greyscale, save and close. Save the PDF. You can also use PitStop to do this if you have it. Another option is to place all of the PDF pages into InDesign, then place the original greyscale images on top of the RGB images from Word, then open the Word PDF and delete the unwanted RGB images. Export to a new PDF from InDesign.