Skill

color-to-grayscale

Convert a color PDF to grayscale (black-and-white) for monochrome digital printing — saves toner and avoids color-mismatch issues. Triggers on phrases like "convert PDF to grayscale", "make it black and white", "remove color from PDF", "monochrome PDF".

npx claudepluginhub danielrosehill/claude-code-plugins --plugin digital-printing

Tool Access

This skill uses the workspace's default tool permissions.

Preview

Strip color from every page of a PDF, producing a grayscale-only output suitable for monochrome printing.

SKILL.md

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Last CommitApr 27, 2026

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Convert PDF to Grayscale

Strip color from every page of a PDF, producing a grayscale-only output suitable for monochrome printing.

Inputs

Input PDF path (required).

Output path (optional) — defaults to <input>-grayscale.pdf.

Tooling

Use ghostscript with the pdfwrite device and a grayscale color conversion strategy. This is the most reliable method — it converts both raster images and vector content.

Recipe

gs -sOutputFile=output.pdf \ -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \ -sColorConversionStrategy=Gray \ -sProcessColorModel=DeviceGray \ -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 \ -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH \ input.pdf

Workflow

Verify input exists.

Confirm gs is installed.

Run the conversion.

Spot-check by rendering page 1 to PNG and confirming no color channels:

gs -sDEVICE=png16m -r72 -o /tmp/check.png -dFirstPage=1 -dLastPage=1 output.pdf

Report file size delta — grayscale PDFs are usually significantly smaller.

Output

Grayscale PDF written to the requested path. Original is not modified.

Caveats

If the source PDF embeds CMYK or spot colors, the conversion is still safe but may flatten subtle tones.

Text remains crisp; embedded JPEGs are re-compressed as grayscale JPEGs.

Convert PDF to Grayscale

Strip color from every page of a PDF, producing a grayscale-only output suitable for monochrome printing.

Inputs

Input PDF path (required).
Output path (optional) — defaults to <input>-grayscale.pdf.

Tooling

Use ghostscript with the pdfwrite device and a grayscale color conversion strategy. This is the most reliable method — it converts both raster images and vector content.

Recipe

gs -sOutputFile=output.pdf \
   -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \
   -sColorConversionStrategy=Gray \
   -sProcessColorModel=DeviceGray \
   -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 \
   -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH \
   input.pdf

Workflow

Verify input exists.
Confirm gs is installed.
Run the conversion.

Spot-check by rendering page 1 to PNG and confirming no color channels:

gs -sDEVICE=png16m -r72 -o /tmp/check.png -dFirstPage=1 -dLastPage=1 output.pdf

Report file size delta — grayscale PDFs are usually significantly smaller.

Output

Grayscale PDF written to the requested path. Original is not modified.

Caveats

If the source PDF embeds CMYK or spot colors, the conversion is still safe but may flatten subtle tones.
Text remains crisp; embedded JPEGs are re-compressed as grayscale JPEGs.