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Grayscale keeps how bright each colour really looks, so reds and blues don't go muddy. Pure black and white and the dot styles contain exactly two colours, saved as a 1-bit PNG.

Turn photos, scans and logos black and white in your browser. Grayscale keeps how bright each colour actually looks, so a red rose or a blue sky doesn't go muddy, and a colour filter changes the mood the way it does on black-and-white film. Pure black and white leaves no grey at all, for stencils, stamps, laser engraving, signatures and crisp printing; dots give the illusion of grey with only two colours. Files are saved as real grayscale or 1-bit images, and nothing is uploaded.

Nothing is uploaded — the file stays on your device
No file size limit
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Free, with no paid tier holding anything back

Grayscale or pure black and white?

“Black and white” means two different things, and the search for it shows it: half the people want a classic black-and-white photo, the other half add “no grey” because the tool they tried gave them grey. This page does both and is explicit about which one you get.

You want	Choose	What the file contains
A black-and-white photo for printing, framing or posting	Grayscale	Up to 256 shades, 8-bit grayscale PNG or single-channel JPG
A stencil, stamp, vinyl or cutting-machine design, a signature, a logo	Pure black and white	Exactly two colours, 1-bit PNG
A photo for a laser engraver, thermal printer or fax-style document	Black and white dots	Two colours arranged as dots that read as grey from a distance

Why reds and blues go muddy elsewhere

Turning colour into grey needs a rule for how bright each colour is. The rules most tools use are shortcuts, and they disagree badly on saturated colours. We measured them in Chrome on pure colours (0 is black, 255 is white):

Colour	Average of R, G, B	TV formula on stored values (BT.601)	CSS `grayscale()`	This page
Pure red	85	76	54	127
Pure green	85	150	182	220
Pure blue	85	29	18	76
Yellow	170	226	237	247
Brick red (200, 30, 40)	90	82	67	102

The averaging rule makes red, green and blue the same grey, which is obviously wrong. The other two apply brightness weights to the stored pixel values, but those values are gamma-encoded, not amounts of light, so saturated colours come out far too dark: a red rose turns nearly black, a blue sky turns into a dark slab. This page converts each pixel to linear light first, weighs the channels there (the sRGB standard's own weights), and converts back. The result is exactly the lightness that a colour meter reports as CIELAB L* — we checked all ten colours on our test chart against it, and mid grey stays exactly 128.

Colour filters, as on black-and-white film

Black-and-white photographers screw a coloured filter onto the lens to decide which colours turn light and which turn dark. The filter menu does the same with the channel weights, and white always stays white:

Red turns blue sky almost black and makes clouds pop; skin becomes smooth and pale. On our chart, brick red went from 102 to 181 and pure blue from 76 to 0.
Yellow is the gentle version: a little more contrast in skies.
Green lightens leaves and grass for landscapes.
Blue darkens reds and skin tones for a moody, gritty look.

Pure black and white, with no grey

Every pixel lighter than the black and white point becomes white, every darker one black. The point is chosen automatically from the picture's own brightness histogram (Otsu's method, which finds the split that best separates the dark and light parts), and the slider overrides it. On our test photo the automatic point was 135 of 255 and made 29% of the picture black.

Saved as PNG, the result is written as a 1-bit image — one bit per pixel — and the page opens the saved file again and counts its colours, so you can see it really is only pure black and pure white. That matters for cutting machines and engraving software that trace the outline, and for forms that ask for a black-and-white signature. Transparent backgrounds stay transparent. If you choose JPG, the page warns you: JPG compression always adds grey pixels along the edges.

Logos: keep the yellow

Deciding by brightness has one big trap with logos: yellow, orange and pastel colours are nearly as bright as white paper, so a black-and-white point that suits the rest of the logo turns them white. On our four-colour test logo the yellow and light-blue parts disappeared completely, and on a transparent logo an orange block turned white — invisible once printed. The Logo style asks a different question for each pixel: is it paper, or is it colour? Every clearly coloured pixel becomes solid black, however light it looks, and white details inside the mark stay white. Set Ink to white for a version for dark backgrounds. The full test is in how to make a logo black and white.

Dots: grey shades with only two colours

Newspapers, laser engravers and thermal receipt printers can only put down ink or no ink. Dithering fakes the shades with patterns of dots. Smooth (Floyd–Steinberg) spreads each pixel's rounding error to its neighbours and keeps the most detail; on our test photo, averaged over 4×4 pixel squares, it was within 8 brightness steps of the grayscale version. Crisp (Atkinson, the method of the original Macintosh) spreads only part of the error, so highlights and shadows stay clean and edges stay sharp, at the cost of some midtone detail.

Smaller files that really are grayscale

Many converters save a grey picture as an ordinary colour file in which red, green and blue happen to be equal. This page writes real grayscale files instead. For the same 640×420 test photo:

File	Size
Grey picture saved as a colour PNG	204 KB
Grayscale PNG (this page)	167 KB
Grayscale JPG, quality 90 (this page)	63 KB
Dithered, 1-bit PNG	22–29 KB
Pure black and white, 1-bit PNG	3.7 KB

Besides the size, editors, print shops and upload checkers see a grayscale file as grayscale, with no colour channels to second-guess.

To grey out a whole PDF for printing, use PDF to grayscale. To hide part of a photo before sharing it, Pixelate image; to make a white background see-through after converting a logo, Make background transparent; and if a form wants the result under a certain size, Compress image to an exact size.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between grayscale and black and white?

Grayscale uses up to 256 shades between black and white, which is what people usually mean by a black-and-white photo. Pure black and white uses only two: every pixel is either black or white. Choose grayscale for photos, pure black and white for stencils, stamps, cutting machines, laser engraving, signatures and fax-style documents.

How do I convert an image to black and white with no grey?

Choose Pure black and white. Every pixel becomes black or white, and the black and white point is chosen from the picture automatically; move the slider if you want more or less black. Save as PNG: it is written as a 1-bit image, and the page reopens it to confirm it contains only pure black and pure white.

Why do red and blue look wrong in other black and white converters?

Many converters average the three colour channels or use a formula meant for old television signals, applied to the stored values. Pure red then becomes a dark grey of 76 or even 54 out of 255, although red looks about as bright as a mid grey. This page calculates brightness in linear light, which gives exactly the lightness a colour scientist would measure: 127 for pure red.

What do the colour filters do?

They work like the coloured filters black-and-white photographers screw onto the lens. A red filter darkens blue sky and smooths skin, yellow adds a little contrast, green lightens foliage, and blue darkens reds and shows freckles. White stays white with every filter.

How do I make a logo black and white without losing its light colours?

Choose Logo - every coloured part black. Ordinary black-and-white conversion decides by brightness, so yellow, orange and pastel parts come out white and disappear; in our test a yellow and a light-blue part both vanished. The logo style asks whether each pixel is colour or paper instead, so every coloured part becomes solid black. Set Ink to White for a version that sits on dark backgrounds.

Which style is best for printing or laser engraving?

For text, logos and line drawings, Pure black and white. For photos on a laser engraver, a thermal printer or a cheap laser printer, the dot styles: smooth dots keep more detail, crisp dots keep edges and highlights cleaner. For ordinary photo printing, grayscale.

Is the result really a grayscale file?

Yes. Grayscale PNGs are saved with one value per pixel instead of three identical colour channels, and JPGs as single-channel grayscale. Black and white PNGs use one bit per pixel. Besides being smaller, these files are recognised as grayscale by editors, printers and upload forms that check.

Are my photos uploaded?

No. The conversion runs on your device, in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere, there is no account and you can convert as many images as you like.