Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

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andy poulsen
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Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

Post by andy poulsen »

Hi,

I need to convert some PDFs to black and white (alternatively I could print directly to a B/W pdf), but haven't found an option to do that. I also didn't find anything here on the forum about how to do it.

I know I can select every text item and change its color, but when I tried doing that to one document, the text properties seemed to change as well, as the appearance was a bit different.

It seems to me that this should be a simple thing to do, and I must be missing something. Help, please! :)

Thanks!

andy
RMan
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Re: Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

Post by RMan »

Try the Document->Convert Colors menus then choose the Black and White profile for the Conversion Profile and see how that works.

You might end up getting some gray colors I think if object had transparency.
convertcolors.jpg
andy poulsen
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Re: Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

Post by andy poulsen »

Thanks for the reply -- I had missed the "Convert Colors" option!

However, when I open that screen, I don't have a "Black and White" option -- mine looks like this:
ConvertColorsDialog.jpg
I'm a bit puzzled because I don't have anything related to Canon HDTV...

The "Grey Gamma 2.2" option *does* give me a grayscale document, which is an improvement, but still not quite the B/W that I'm looking for.

Any other thoughts?
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello Andy,

the options available in this list are based on the .icc color profiles that are present in your Windows installation. the Black & White option that Rman is seeing, is likely present due to one of the devices that he has connected or installed on the PC in the past, but unfortunately is not a "default" profile with windows. I also do not have a Black & white color profile on my PC, so my dialog looks much like yours, whereas one of my coworkers has so many options that there is a scrollbar in this dropdown menu.

To acquire a Black and white color profile, you will need to locate a Black & White color profile and place it into:

Code: Select all

C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\drivers\color
Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
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andy poulsen
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Re: Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

Post by andy poulsen »

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for the reply. Wouldn't it make sense for a B/W profile to be included by default? Seems like something that a lot of people could benefit from, even if you're not hearing from them...

Also, is there a way to configure the PDF X-Change printer to print in B/W?

Thanks!

andy
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello Andy,

These default profiles are provided by Windows and you hardware devices that may be installed, we have no direct control over which are present, but are instead taking advantage of what is available. Unfortunately this means that we cannot add in additional items to this list ourselves.

You can set the Standard Printer to convert images to B&W but none of the other content can be handled like that.
image.png
With that said, you can setup the Editor to use a monochrome or Greyscale Color override when printing to any printer, from the "Advanced print options > More" menu:
image.png
Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
Tracker Software Products (Canada) LTD

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andy poulsen
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Re: Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

Post by andy poulsen »

Thank you for the additional information. That helps! I didn't know about the color override option, so that's a good one to know!

Yes, I had discovered the option to convert images, but was hoping there would be an option to convert text to grayscale and B/W.

Any chance this option can be implemented in the future?
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello Andy,

There is a chance, although I cannot say it is a large one. As the color information stored in objects like text, annotations and the like is specifically for a digital format, it is usually preferred to keep the color information as it offers increased fidelity compared to less colorful alternatives. You can always choose monochrome or greyscale when printing, so there is no real benefit in removing color from the PDF version of a documents.

Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
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RMan
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Re: Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

Post by RMan »

I'll agree but some government agencies I believe still spec that CAD PDF files should be submitted in monochrome.

It would be really nice if instead of using an icc file if there was just a monochrome or grayscale option.

It looks like my icc file was likely installed by an Adobe product but not sure which one.
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello Rman,

It appears that a Gray gamma profile comes default with windows (having just finished installing windows on a new device), so that should always be available, nonetheless, as the convert colors function relies on having a color profile to convert to, we cannot offer a simple "monochrome" or "greyscale" option directly. If greyscale is needed using the grey gamma option should serve well. If monochrome is specifically needed, the print dialog's color override function should serve.

Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
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rah
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Re: Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

Post by rah »

I had a user bring me a PDF of a CAD file drawn in yellow, green and sky blue. Looks fine on a black background but pretty problematic on a white one.

I didn't find a black and white color profile on my system either but I checked a few other PCs and found one installed.

I did some research and found that color profiles are stored as *.icc files. I did a search of the C: drive and found a number of these files, one of them being "BlackWhite.icc". There were actually 3 identical copies, two in Adobe Acrobat 10.0 subdirectories and one in

C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color

To test, I copied "BlackWhite.icc" to the "C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color" subdirectory on my PC. Then I restarted PDF-XChange Editor and now I had a "Black & White" profile available.

To convert the PDF, all I had to do is select Convert - Convert Colors from the main menu in PDF-XChange. The only change in the Convert Colors screen I made was to select the "Black & White" conversion profile and hit "OK".

So the tedious part of this process is that you have to find an installation of Adobe Reader 10 or download and install it so you can copy the .icc file.

Honestly, I think Tracker could pretty easily make this a part of the install process and save users a lot of messing around.
RMan
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Re: Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

Post by RMan »

Unfortunately the Adobe BlackWhite.icc is copyright protected by Adobe and not included in the icc files that they would allow other software developers to redistribute from what I found in my quick research.

And Adobe only installs it with the full Acrobat, not with the Reader I believe.

Hopefully someday Tracker will look into having someone create an equivalent icc profile to include with their product to solve the problem for all users. It would be really great to have a simple grayscale and monochrome conversion options and not even have to worry about icc files so it would just work for all users.
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello all,

RMan is correct here, until a day comes when we can spend the resources to develop our own ICC profiles we can only offer what Windows has readily available.
For the time being, The method rah suggested, in copying the profiles manually, is indeed the best method to do this.

Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
Tracker Software Products (Canada) LTD

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Timur Born
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Re: Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

Post by Timur Born »

Or use the "Accessibility" options of Editor, which can turn everything into black & white except images. It does not turn colored line art into different grayscales, though.

This would also allow you to simply turn the white background to black, gray or whatever helps to discern your colored lines.
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Will - Tracker Supp
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Re: Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Thanks Timur - that's a good tip! :)
If posting files to this forum, you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded.
Thank you.

Best regards

Will Travaglini
Tracker Support (Europe)
Tracker Software Products Ltd.
http://www.tracker-software.com
marcorod
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Re: Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

Post by marcorod »

I do not see Black & White as a Conversion Profile. How can I add or fix this issue?
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hi, marcorod

We make use of the ICC color profiles that are installed in windows, these are generally provided by the hardware connected to your PC, but you may be able to download new profiles to be installed on the web. I do not have a B&W profile to point you towards, so the best I can do it wish you luck in your search.
Once the profile is installed in windows, restart our Editor and then return to this menu, you should see the new profile is available for selection.

Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
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xpdf29349521
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Re: Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

Post by xpdf29349521 »

Hi,
same requirement on my side, wanting to convert quickly color->grayscale->bw/mono or directly color->bw/mono

I did search my Windows (11, also Windows.old from upgrades) and found several *.icc's including two black-white profiles from Adobe and Apple.

Downloading ICC from adobe doesn't work in my case, just freezes, can anyone confirm?
https://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/iccprofiles/iccprofiles_win.html

Having imported the mono ICC, restarted pdf-xchanger editor and there it is "Black & White".

Now comes the BUT:

It's doing something for some seconds (I have a fast machine) and the whole page turns BLACK.

I also don't seem to see BOTH ICCs, from Adobe or Apple. There is just one. I tried changing names and re-imported, but only "Black & White" is shoing in pdf-xchanger, one profile only.

Regards

PS. The gamma gray works perfect. We need similar for black-white/monochrome please.


Updates (6h later):

Tried using the printer. Not sure if the B&W came since the ICCs (above) were installed or is it part of pdf-xchanger?

B&W w/o dithering: [url]https://imgur.com/iT7xj3A[/url] - Not acceptable (noise)
B&W w/o dithering: [url]https://imgur.com/PiT7llr[/url] - Not acceptable
Monochrome 1: [url]https://imgur.com/KugANEF[/url] - Not acceptable
Monochrome 2: [url]https://imgur.com/Q5g5CuR[/url] - Not acceptable
B&W w/ dithering: [url]https://imgur.com/FKS5WGL[/url] - Ok but dotted
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello, xpdf29349521

Do you specifically need to preserve the original content/comment/text of the pages for editing? I ask because you could use the "rasterize pages" function we offer, to convert all pages to images, and simultaneously make those images B/W or Greyscale (at the moment no monochrome, but perhaps we can add that in the future):
image.png
xpdf29349521 wrote: Sat Jun 17, 2023 2:48 pm Downloading ICC from adobe doesn't work in my case, just freezes, can anyone confirm?
On my end, I did not have any issues with these profiles.

Beyond that, I cannot speak much for the issue where both the Adobe and Apple versions seem to be usable, but only one is present at a time, It could be that they are actually the same profile, and so have the same identifiers. From Windows' perspective, regardless of the file name, if are the same profile, only one can be shown. That is beyond our purview however, so I cannot really help...

Similarly, if a color profile is not converting as needed, The best I can really offer is the suggestion to locate and try another. If something is notably incorrect, like you screenshot where monochrome gave a solid green output, having a copy of that profile to test with here would be very helpful, so thank you for those, I will be passing this topic along to our Dev in charge of color profile management for his review.

Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
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xpdf29349521
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Re: Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

Post by xpdf29349521 »

Sorry for belayed answer. I tried rasterizing, but there was an unacceptable loss of information related with it, unfortunately.

As of now, I'm very much trying to avoid conversion at all from the very beginning of any processing. For example, I mix and match BW and gray parts, too. The head-end part (scanning) does not allow for intelligent switching between Gray or BW images.

Regards
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TrackerSupp-Daniel
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Re: Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello, xpdf29349521

Sorry to hear that is not working well for you. Minimizing the amount of conversion would certainly be one way to minimize the impact, initially scanning in B/W would be idea for your needs, where possible. I hope things work out for you that way in the meantime.

Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
Tracker Software Products (Canada) LTD

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xpdf29349521
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Re: Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

Post by xpdf29349521 »

Yes, I can scan color/gray/b&w or mixed-mode -- this works extremely well.

The challenge arises only if the input material is coming another source, say, was scanned in color or gray and not initially scanned in b&w. Then, without extraction and external image-processing loops, a handy b&w conversion inside PDF-X would be sought after.

A related question about conversion is viewtopic.php?p=176672
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Tracker Supp-Stefan
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Re: Convert to Black and White (or print in B/W)

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hello xpdf29349521,

Once again thanks for your feedback!
Indeed - it would be nice to have, however we sometimes need to strike a balance between being a Swiss army knife, and being overwhelmed and bloated by all the features. So I will pass your feedback to our devs, however I can't make any promises that we will be making significant improvements to the image colour processing in particular.

Kind regards,
Stefan
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