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I have a printer which has a black ink connected to the cyan nozzles (black nozzles are blocked). I therefore need to convert a colour PDF file to black and white scale and then convert it to cyan and white scale. I wonder if Adobe Acrobat has such a function to automate this more quickly. Is it possible to do?

Example: convert this CMYK PDF (before) to this CYAN PDF (after)

Michal
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Assuming you have Acrobat Pro, there is an Ink Manager which may be able to do this. I have not worked with it, but the Ink Alias function sounds like it might be able to do this:

Create an ink alias for a spot color

You can map a spot color to a different spot or process color by creating an alias. An alias is useful if a document contains two similar spot colors when only one is required, or if it contains too many spot colors. You can see the effects of ink aliasing in the printed output, and you see the effects onscreen if Overprint Preview mode is on.

  1. In the Ink Manager, select the spot color ink you want to create an alias for.
  2. Choose an option in the Ink Alias menu. The ink type icon and ink description change accordingly.

In this case you would first convert the document as a whole to greyscale, then back to colour (which retains the greyscale, but gives you the full colour range to work with). Then you assign black as an alias to cyan.

MiG
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  • It sounds awesome but I don't know how to create and use the aliases. I don't have an option to change the alias: [LINK](https://puu.sh/JiITX/d550cbed05.png) – Michal Aug 29 '22 at 22:14
  • That [help page](https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/color-conversion-ink-management-acrobat.html) mentions creating an Ink Alias first (step 11, I assume that's how it becomes available): *"Click Ink Manager to specify the ink settings and create an ink alias. If an alias is set up in the Ink Manager, the alias name is next to the Ink Manager button in the Convert Colors dialog box."* – MiG Aug 29 '22 at 22:20
  • I read this but still I don't have an alias. I did the steps but nothing showed up in the ink manager :/ – Michal Aug 29 '22 at 22:29
  • Strange. This sounds promising, *"create a preflight profile"*: https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-sdk-discussions/acrobat-pro-preflight-fixup-how-to-map-lot-of-colors/m-p/8553546 – MiG Aug 30 '22 at 13:54
  • I did the steps from your link from adobe community. I found a "Map colors" option and I used it. There are my settings but after execute on the PDF file I opened there are no differences before and after execute :/ My settings: [Map colors SETTINGS](https://puu.sh/Jj1Kq/dab8e3eb86.png). – Michal Aug 31 '22 at 18:15
  • There are 2 issues with your settings. 1. you use 100/100/100/100 for the source colour. That colour will never be used in any document. Black would be 0/0/0/100. 2. Even if that works, it will only replace black with cyan. It will not replace grey with a shade of cyan. – hdhondt Sep 01 '22 at 00:40
  • Damn... Not so good. Could you maybe have other ideas? I got information that something like "spot color" can do this but not ink manager. – Michal Sep 08 '22 at 19:39
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You can convert a PDF to grayscale with these tools:

  1. Use the free PDF-XChange Editor Portable to load the PDF, and Export to TIFF format, setting Image type as 8 (GrayScale). Caveat: the output TIFF file might be 10 times the size of the PDF. It would be nice if it could be exported as a PDF, but I do not see that option on my version of the app.

PDF to grayscale TIFF

2.If you want the TIFF as a PDF, once again, open the file in an image editor such as IrfanView and print as PDF using Microsoft Print PDF.

TIFF to PDF

Though the final PDF is in grayscale, it might be possible to change each page to a specific color. However, it should print looking substantially as black, even missing cyan. Perhaps the printer has a setting to block magenta and yellow, or they can be removed if in separate cartridges.

DrMoishe Pippik
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While not a direct answer to your question, an imaging application that is able to open PDFs can do this. Examples include PhotoShop and Irfanview (free download). However, PhotoShop only opens a single page of the PDF.

In Irfanview, open the PDF. If it is a coloured PDF, go to Image > Convert to Grayscale. Then, go to Image > Color corrections and set both Green and Blue sliders to 255. Save the image as PDF. Press Page Down to go to the next page, and repeat. You can print directly from Irfanview, or, for more printing flexibility, you can open the (now coloured) PDF in your PDF reader, and print from there.

Note: You must use Irfanview 32-bit, as the 64-bit version currently does not support PDF format.

hdhondt
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  • Yes, now I use the Ghostscript and ImageMagick to this but I know that the best solution is to change the color using Adobe Acrobat or something like that (without converting mainly text to image). – Michal Aug 31 '22 at 19:40