How to Generate PDF in Grayscale

Hairil Hasyimi Bin Omar

July 18, 2023

Updated December 10, 2024

A grayscale PDF is a type of PDF document where all the colors and shades are represented using shades of gray instead of the full-color spectrum.

IronPDF offers the functionality to render PDF documents in grayscale instead of colors. Printing PDF documents in grayscale is cost-effective for large batch printing. Additionally, rendering in grayscale enhances readability, particularly when the original colors are excessively bright or vibrant. Furthermore, grayscale PDFs enjoy increased compatibility across a wide range of devices, software, and platforms, ensuring consistent viewing and printing experiences across different systems.

How to Generate Grayscale PDF in C#

Download the IronPDF Library for Rendering Grayscale PDFs
Instantiate the ChromePdfRenderer class
Set the GrayScale property of RenderingOptions to true
Access and render PDF document from a URL, HTML string, or file
Export the grayscale PDF document to the desired location

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First Step:

Generate Grayscale PDF Example

To generate a grayscale PDF, you can set the GrayScale property of the RenderingOptions to true.

In the provided code snippet, we can see that the grayscale feature is enabled after instantiating a ChromePdfRenderer. It is then used to render a web page using the RenderUrlAsPdf method. The code snippet also includes extracting only the first page of the rendered PDF and saving it locally.

:path=/static-assets/pdf/content-code-examples/how-to/color-grayscale-grayscale.cs

using IronPdf;

ChromePdfRenderer renderer = new ChromePdfRenderer();

// Set GrayScale to true
renderer.RenderingOptions.GrayScale = true;

PdfDocument pdf = renderer.RenderUrlAsPdf("https://ironsoftware.com/");
pdf.CopyPage(0).SaveAs("test.pdf");

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Please note

The current implementation of the Grayscale feature will turn the text in the rendered PDF document into an image, resulting in the ExtractAllImages method not outputting any text.

Currently, this functionality is only available when rendering PDFs. In the future, it would be beneficial to have the ability to convert existing PDF documents to grayscale.

Hairil Hasyimi Bin Omar

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Software Engineer

Like all great engineers, Hairil is an avid learner. He’s refining his knowledge of C#, Python, and Java, using that knowledge to add value to team members across Iron Software. Hairil joined the Iron Software team from Universiti Teknologi MARA in Malaysia, where he graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Chemical and Process Engineering.