PDF: convert to grayscale
 

Does anyone know a tool (other than ghostscript) that is able to convert
a PDF (or postscript) to grayscale?

Ghostscript does this, but is unable to convert gradients and fills
(they're replaced by bitmaps) which results in a too big file unless I
drastically reduce quality.

--
Nuno J. Silva
gopher://sdf-eu.org/1/users/njsg

PDF: convert to grayscale
 

On 02/08/11 08:50, Nuno J. Silva wrote:
> Does anyone know a tool (other than ghostscript) that is able to convert
> a PDF (or postscript) to grayscale?

A laserjet? =)

PDF: convert to grayscale
 

On 2011-02-08, Nuno J. Silva <nunojsilva@ist.utl.pt> wrote:
> Does anyone know a tool (other than ghostscript) that is able to convert
> a PDF (or postscript) to grayscale?
>
> Ghostscript does this, but is unable to convert gradients and fills
> (they're replaced by bitmaps) which results in a too big file unless I
> drastically reduce quality.

I don't understand what you're asking for. What sort of output format
do you want (raster, vector, ???)?

--
Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! Send your questions to
at ``ASK ZIPPY', Box 40474,
gmail.com San Francisco, CA 94140,
USA

PDF: convert to grayscale
 

Grant Edwards writes:

> On 2011-02-08, Nuno J. Silva <nunojsilva@ist.utl.pt> wrote:
> > Does anyone know a tool (other than ghostscript) that is able to
> > convert a PDF (or postscript) to grayscale?
> >
> > Ghostscript does this, but is unable to convert gradients and fills
> > (they're replaced by bitmaps) which results in a too big file unless I
> > drastically reduce quality.
>
> I don't understand what you're asking for. What sort of output format
> do you want (raster, vector, ???)?

I think he wants the same PDF as the original file. Only in grayscale.

This is one method to do this, but it needs Acrobat 8 Professional:
http://blog.gilbertconsulting.com/2007/05/convert-color-pdf-to-grayscale.html

Wonko

PDF: convert to grayscale
 

On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 7:50 AM, Nuno J. Silva <nunojsilva@ist.utl.pt> wrote:
> Does anyone know a tool (other than ghostscript) that is able to convert
> a PDF (or postscript) to grayscale?
>
> Ghostscript does this, but is unable to convert gradients and fills
> (they're replaced by bitmaps) which results in a too big file unless I
> drastically reduce quality.

Are you the creator of the document and want to save the original as
greyscale, or you want to convert an already existing PDF?

If the latter I think the easy way is to use ghostscript (pdf2ps) to
render it as greyscale postscript. Then you could convert the PS back
to PDF if you need to. But if you already tried that, then, I don't
know...

PDF: convert to grayscale
 

On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 4:07 PM, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 7:50 AM, Nuno J. Silva <nunojsilva@ist.utl.pt> wrote:
>> Does anyone know a tool (other than ghostscript) that is able to convert
>> a PDF (or postscript) to grayscale?
>>
>> Ghostscript does this, but is unable to convert gradients and fills
>> (they're replaced by bitmaps) which results in a too big file unless I
>> drastically reduce quality.
>
> Are you the creator of the document and want to save the original as
> greyscale, or you want to convert an already existing PDF?
>
> If the latter I think the easy way is to use ghostscript (pdf2ps) to
> render it as greyscale postscript. Then you could convert the PS back
> to PDF if you need to. But if you already tried that, then, I don't
> know...
>
>

Use the GIMP, Luke. I have to do this all the time with forms and
such. The GIMP imports PDF files nicely, and I usually print the file
to PDF after I am done. Now, if you have a many page document, the
GIMP will import each page as a layer which can make it a pain to have
to manually print each layer as a separate pdf, but ya do what ya
gotta do. I also like PDFShuffler for managing/mangling pdf files. Its
in portage by the way.

HTH,
quantum
--
Matthew W. Summers

PDF: convert to grayscale
 

(Sorry for the late replies)

Matthew Summers <quantumsummers@gentoo.org> writes:
> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 7:50 AM, Nuno J. Silva <nunojsilva@ist.utl.pt> wrote:
>>> Does anyone know a tool (other than ghostscript) that is able to convert
>>> a PDF (or postscript) to grayscale?
[...]
> Use the GIMP, Luke. I have to do this all the time with forms and
> such. The GIMP imports PDF files nicely, and I usually print the file
> to PDF after I am done. Now, if you have a many page document, the
> GIMP will import each page as a layer which can make it a pain to have
> to manually print each layer as a separate pdf, but ya do what ya
> gotta do. I also like PDFShuffler for managing/mangling pdf files. Its
> in portage by the way.

GIMP will make it raster, and my goal was keeping it vectorial.

BTW, if you happen to, for some reason, convert pdf to raster
frequently, see ImageMagick's convert, which for some output formats (at
least png and jpeg) does a batch export of all pages (as separate
files). It will probably be handy when the PDF has many pages.

--
Nuno J. Silva
gopher://sdf-eu.org/1/users/njsg

PDF: convert to grayscale
 

Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> writes:

> On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 7:50 AM, Nuno J. Silva <nunojsilva@ist.utl.pt> wrote:
>> Does anyone know a tool (other than ghostscript) that is able to convert
>> a PDF (or postscript) to grayscale?
>>
>> Ghostscript does this, but is unable to convert gradients and fills
>> (they're replaced by bitmaps) which results in a too big file unless I
>> drastically reduce quality.
>
> Are you the creator of the document and want to save the original as
> greyscale, or you want to convert an already existing PDF?

All I have are PDFs, without any original file.

> If the latter I think the easy way is to use ghostscript (pdf2ps) to
> render it as greyscale postscript. Then you could convert the PS back
> to PDF if you need to. But if you already tried that, then, I don't
> know...

From what I've been reading, it's always better to use pdftops (poppler)
because pdf2ps generates lower-level stuff and also converts fonts to
bitmap. But both ways, I'd end up doing the conversion in ghostscript,
and that's where the problem is.

--
Nuno J. Silva
gopher://sdf-eu.org/1/users/njsg

PDF: convert to grayscale
 

Alex Schuster <wonko@wonkology.org> writes:

> Grant Edwards writes:
>
>> On 2011-02-08, Nuno J. Silva <nunojsilva@ist.utl.pt> wrote:
>> > Does anyone know a tool (other than ghostscript) that is able to
>> > convert a PDF (or postscript) to grayscale?
>> >
>> > Ghostscript does this, but is unable to convert gradients and fills
>> > (they're replaced by bitmaps) which results in a too big file unless I
>> > drastically reduce quality.
>>
>> I don't understand what you're asking for. What sort of output format
>> do you want (raster, vector, ???)?
>
> I think he wants the same PDF as the original file. Only in grayscale.

Yeah, that's it. I ended up hacking the PDF to convert all RGB to
grayscale, but even if the result was the original without colors (what
I wanted), converting it to ghostscript made some text unreadable (white
on white), so it was clearly not a good idea to trust it to look the
same everywhere.

I gave up and used the color version.

> This is one method to do this, but it needs Acrobat 8 Professional:
> http://blog.gilbertconsulting.com/2007/05/convert-color-pdf-to-grayscale.html

Thanks for the link. Although I don't have Acrobat, if I ever happen to
get access to it I'll probably check that feature :-)

--
Nuno J. Silva
gopher://sdf-eu.org/1/users/njsg

PDF: convert to grayscale
 

Michael Orlitzky <michael@orlitzky.com> writes:

> On 02/08/11 08:50, Nuno J. Silva wrote:
>> Does anyone know a tool (other than ghostscript) that is able to convert
>> a PDF (or postscript) to grayscale?
>
> A laserjet? =)

That makes me wonder... in a color printer, I expect it not to print any
color when it has no color ink, but do grayscale printers apply some
conversion internally, to make sure that e.g. plain cyan is still
visible (instead of making it white)?

--
Nuno J. Silva
gopher://sdf-eu.org/1/users/njsg