Convert a PDF to greyscale on the command line in FLOSS?

ubuntu_ulysses

I have a colour PDF file, and I'm going to print it out and then photocopy it in black and white. I'd like to know what it's like in B&W before photocopying it. Is it possible to 'greyscale' a PDF on the command line using free software? I'm using Ubuntu 9.10.

Originally asked by Amandasaurus on Stack Exchange (superuser) (CC BY-SA 2.5).

uphilltech

Good Linux question — answering as the UphillTech team:

Better: gs \ -sOutputFile=output.pdf \ -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \ -sColorConversionStrategy=Gray \ -dProcessColorModel=/DeviceGray \ -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 \ -dNOPAUSE \ -dBATCH \ input.pdf

Full answer by goyinux: https://superuser.com/a/164857 (CC BY-SA 2.5).

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