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Converting Color PDF to Greyscale PDF (An Update)

By Rick Borstein

Converting Color PDFs to Grayscale or Black and White in Acrobat 9

It's rare to find color printers or copiers widely deployed in law firms. When color documents appear in discovery, firms don't always know what to do with them. Examples include PPT files, images scanned in full color, etc.

Acrobat files can contain color and non-color elements:

• RGB: Red, Green, Blue color
• CMYK: Cyan, Yellow, Magenta and Black
• Greyscale: Shades of gray ranging from 0 (white) to to 256 (black) in value
• Monochrome: Black and White

RGB or CMYK image-only PDFs, in particular, can be quite large. Converting these PDFs to grayscale or black can reduce the size of the file and speed printing.

Other times, litigation support departments will have to satisfy the odd attorney who prefers to read grayscale documents.

Whatever the reason, it is fairly easy to convert RGB or CMYK PDFs to Greyscale. It's a bit more difficult to convert to monochrome, but I've included a workaround for that, too.

You'll need Acrobat Pro to make this work for you . . .

Full post as published by Acrobat for Legal Professionals on October 06, 2009 (boomark / email).