Designer: Conversion to grey

[TheK]

Hi there,

I've got a veeery large file with hundreds of elements in different colours (imported pdf so no logic any more in the elements' grouping - no easy way to change the colours manually for each element) . Since I need to cover some areas in color I would like to change the colours of the elements in the original document to grey. During import (or later on) I can switch the color mode to grayscale, which does the trick quite well. However, this is non-destructive. Whenever I change back to RGB to insert my coloured elements the original colouring is restored.

I've tried to use the layer effect black/white - but that doesn't help in this case. The result looks the way I want it - but during export all the original elements and text will be rasterized due to the effect layer (so that the tiny font can't be read any more) or (if I switch off rasterizing in the "more" settings of the export dialogue) the black/white setting will be ignored and I get also back to the very colourful file after export. 

Is there any easy way to convert all elements or the whole file to greyscale and keep this conversion when switching back to RGB or convert the original document to grey without changing the color mode to greyscale, so that I can insert coloured areas?

Thank you for any hints.

[R C-R]

If you change the mode to grayscale & then save & close the document, what happens if you reopen it?

[TheK]

That doesn't change anything. The colours are restored when I switch back to RGB mode.

[lepr]

You can create a new version of the PDF where the colour definitions of attributes of objects are in greyscale:

1. Open the original colourful PDF in Designer, choosing "Grey/8" or "Grey/16" as the colour model in the opening dialog
2. Export to a new PDF
3. Close the original PDF

Now when that new PDF is opened as, or placed into, an RGB document, its objects should remain grey.

 

[TheK]

Perfect! Thank you so much. 👍