How to Make a Scanned Document Black & White

By Joshua Laud

Most scanners will usually scan in color when they acquire an image. While this is useful for photographs, if you have scanned a text document, then you only need the file to be stored in black and white. Color images take up more space than black-and-white images on your computer. So it is useful to reduce them in size so that you can distribute or store them more effectively. You can change a color photo to black and white using the Windows Live Photo Gallery, which is built into Windows.

Navigate to the document on your computer.

Right-click the document, and click "Open with Windows Live Photo Gallery" (if you are a Windows Vista user, it is called "Windows Photo Gallery").

Click "Fix."

Click "Black and white effects," then choose one of the black-and-white effects. As well as normal black and white, Windows Live Photo Gallery can also add aging effects to your photos.

Click "File," then "Save" to confirm your changes. You have now turned your scanned document into black and white.

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