Export Grayscale PDF from a color InDesign doc

[dave9621]

A much needed feature is a setting in the Export as PDF to export a color ID document as grayscale. I, like many designers I'm sure, often am asked to create a black and white or grayscale version PDF of an existing document. Right now I have to create a copy of the document, drop in grayscale images, strip out the colors and replace with tints of black. The other solution is to use Acrobat Pro to do the conversion, sometimes simpler, but not elegant by any means. It seems like it would only make sense to have this option available in the Export panel "Export as grayscale" or something. What do you think Adobe, is this doable?? I see a lot of people looking for it when I Google it.

[Dov Isaacs]

The question is not whether it is doable, but rather whether any way it could be done automatically would be acceptable. Simply stripping off the color information and using the result often yields results that are very low in contrast with imagery that to put it mildly is not very pleasant.

Those of us familiar with analog black and white photography may recall that black and white films were designed to provide sensitivity to different colors in a manner that would yield realistic results. Even then, serious photographers often used colored filters over their camera lenses to further fine tune the results.

Those of us who often need to create monochrome images from color digital images typically treat each image individually to yield realistic and pleasing results.

Thus, be careful what you ask for. A one-size-fits-all conversion from color to grayscale for a whole document can yield very mediocre results.

          - Dov

[dave9621]

Dov, thank you for your well thought out, and correct, response. I agree with you whole heartedly about the sensitivity to different colors when converting to grayscale. In a perfect world when I design for black and white I carefully convert every image and balanced them as needed and build the InDesign document as a grayscale doc from the beginning. But what I'm really craving is the quick fix for a document that is done in color that a client now needs in grayscale. I get this a lot for newspaper ads. We do an ad for a magazine in color and then they say "hey, can I have this in black and white, we're going to run the same ad in a newspaper". If I could just export that same ID file as a grayscale PDF I'd be done. In this case I'd be willing to sacrifice a little quality...the same trade off as converting the PDF to grayscale in Acrobat Pro would be fine by me.

Thanks again for your answer, I hope the wizards at Adobe can come up with a good solution...it's not a big feature, but a simple one that could save me a lot of hassle here and there.

Dave

[MFS11501]

You can specify "grayscale" as an output option when you export an eps file.  Why would this option not also be available for pdf or even jpg exports?  Granted, you may not like the quality, in which case, you can always do things differently, but I do a LOT of B/W newspaper ads, and not being able to export pdf's as Grayscale is a real pain in the butt.

[Peter Spier]

You can, however, PRINT them to grayscale PDF. Be sure to set your black handling to output all blacks as rich black, though, to avoid screened100%K elements.

[Peter Spier]

And if everything in the ad is already on the K plate, a normal Exported PDF without color conversion should be fine.

[bizpubs]

The flaw in your argument is .... we all already use a one-size-fits-all solution (conversion in Acrobat).  Adobe makes us use a Rube Goldberg process, and the end result is the same as if you had an "export to grascale" option in InDesign.

[kdsclocan]

I've found that after exporting a CMYK print-ready pdf, if I want to convert to grayscale I do so in Acrobat. Under print production and preflight, you can go to the digital printing section and choose B/W which also does several other fixes, or you can just convert to grayscale in the pdf fixups section of the preflight window.

[Guest]

There are several work arounds.

• Exporting the EPS and then distillling
• Exporting the PDF then converting
• Using a third party InDesign plug in for the images - like: http://www.rorohiko.com/wordpress/indesign-downloads/color2gray/

BUT...

It would be great to include this as a PDF export option. Even better if you could apply a 'colour profile' or similar to darken or lighten the resulting imags.

That would be SWEEEET!!

[Guest]

Just set up your regular print menu for grayscale output, print to file for a .ps file,  open the .ps file in Acrobat and you should have a Black and White version.

[Printer_Rick]

Not sure if someone has suggested the following:

1. Assign a Maximum GCR CMYK profile to the InDesign document. It is fairly easy to create one of these profiles in Photoshop.

2. Change the Transparency Blend Space to RGB.

3. Draw a paper filled box over the entire page. Change the blend mode to Color. I like to put this box on a top layer that I can hide to restore color to the document.

4. Output PDF/X-1a. You will probably see a warning about the blend space, but continue on with the export.

Resulting PDF is CMYK with empty CMY plates. Be advised this procedure should be used when all you want is a quick PDF with everything on the black plate, quality not being a major issue. It may be helpful if you want to avoid Post Script, Distiller, or an extra step in Acrobat Pro.

[Vikrant R]

Grayscale Preview and Export is now available in InDesign CS6.

I had written a small blog post about how to use it: http://blogs.adobe.com/vikrant/2012/05/indesign-cs6-grayscale-preview-and-export/

[laurens38360630]

Easy peezy!! This is absolutely the way to go! Thank you!

[Peter Spier]

And grayscale export has been added directly to ID since CS6.

[creativigrafica]

Hi. There's an option in Adobe Acrobat. In Tools > Print Production > Convert Colors > Convert Colors to Output Intent - Profile: Gray Gamma 1.8 / 2.2

[PjMcCabe]

This is the answer everyone wants. Thanks!

[rob day · Accepted solution]

Hi @PjMcCabe , The original post is from 2010, see @Peter Spier ’s answer from 2015. You can convert directly to any Grayscale destination by choosing a Gray profile from Output>Destination when Convert to Destination is chosen as the Color Conversion:

[agrm]

I'm Not getting the 'Dot Gain 25%' option as a drop down. I have followed threads about removing colour settings (the ACEConfigCache2.lst) - tried that and no change.

Updated versions of Mac OS and CC.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Set "Color Conversion" to "Convert to Destination." You will then find the Dot Gain options in the list for "Destination":

There are many subtleties to doing color conversion in PDF export, but I will just add that, for things like KDP printing and most color-source to B&W printing, the SGray option (currently at the very bottom of the list) has done an excellent job with very little fussing.

[agrm]

Those options are not there - that's the problem. This is the screenshot I meant to do...

[Peter Spier]

Have you tried resetting preferences? See Reset InDesign Preferences and Other Troubleshooting 

[rob day]

Hi @agrm , That would happen if you have your Color Settings set to CMS Off—with color management turned off the only Destination color spaces available are Document RGB and CMYK. Make sure your Color Settings are not set to this:

[KML91]

It looks like your Standard Drop down menu near the top is set to none. It should be PDF/X-4:2010 and will give you more results. 🙂