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Grayscale PDF

For the mono printer, the smaller scan, the print shop that asked for it.

More free conversions, where you upload. The Fylane extension does the same work inside any upload form, on its own free share every day.About the extension

How to grayscale PDF

  1. Drop the PDF.
  2. Nothing to choose.
  3. Press Convert and download.

What happens to your file

Ghostscript rewrites the document with every colour converted to grey — text, vector drawings and photographs alike — and nothing else changed: the pages, the fonts, the text you can select, the links. The file is usually smaller, since colour images carry three channels and grey ones carry one.

A PDF that is already grey comes back the same, which the report says.

Questions

Is it the same as printing in black and white?

It is what the printer would do, done once and saved — so every copy, every reader and every print is grey, and the file is smaller.

Does the text stay selectable?

Yes. Only the colours change; the text layer, links and bookmarks stay.

Do this in code

curl -X POST https://api.fylane.dev/v1/jobs \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FYLANE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "file_id": "<file id>",
    "operation": "pdf.grayscale",
    "options": {}
  }'

The same operation, pdf.grayscale — Every colour to grey — text, vectors and images — through Ghostscript. Upload first with the quickstart; every option is on the operations page. 500 free credits a month, then $5 per thousand.