Black and White Image Converter

This tool removes color while retaining shades of gray. It does not threshold every pixel to pure black or pure white, and it does not automatically improve contrast or clean up a scanned page. If your goal is readable text from a scan, straighten and crop the image first, then use Image to Text for recognition.

Different colors can become similar shades of gray. A chart using red and green series may be difficult to read after conversion even if the original was clear. Add labels or different line patterns in the original chart before removing color. The same issue affects colored annotations, maps and highlighted text; inspect those areas before sharing the result.

The output keeps the source pixel dimensions. PNG remains PNG with its transparency; JPEG remains JPEG and is re-encoded. Removing color does not guarantee a smaller file, because the result is encoded as a new image. Keep the color original if you may need it later: the downloaded grayscale copy does not contain enough information to reconstruct the original colors.

Black-and-white images can create a cleaner aesthetic, reduce distracting colors and help create consistent visual styles for design, documents or social content.