I needed to print out a PDF proposal, but 2 pages of the file had a darker color, which made the first printout quite hard to read. How could I change it to white color for professional handouts?” —Luz/Business consultant

Perhaps you want to change the background of your PDF into a solid white or black color like Luz? If so, you will be pleased to know this is actually easy to do today, because most PDF tools have an impressive feature to add or change background in a PDF document.

Adobe Acrobat isn’t the only company working on converting PDF background colors, in this guide, we will look at different ways/tools to change PDF background color from black to white, so you can print or share the PDF in the look you want.

Editor’s notes: If you want to change PDF background color from one to another, this guide is applicable too.

Key takeaways

  1. Change PDF Background Color from Black to White in Adobe Acrobat
  2. Convert Black Background to White in PDF without Adobe Acrobat
  3. How to Change PDF Background Color to White Online Free?
  4. How to Change PDF Background to White in MS Word?

Change PDF Background Color from Black to White in Adobe Acrobat

As common as PDFs are, Adobe Acrobat is actually the apple of many PDF users’ eye, it creates PDF and keeps making PDF stronger and stronger. The days of downloading a separate program to edit a PDF file has come for long, most of us trust more on a robust standalone PDF tool like Adobe Acrobat, it does jobs within seconds or minutes, lets users dive into all kinds of PDF with full control.

It can edit anything in your PDF file, including texts, images, urls, media objects, fields, backgrounds, metadata. Any time somebody send you a PDF file to sign or review, you can get it back soon. Not only change black PDF background to white, or convert white PDF background to black, it can change to all kinds of solid color from the color palette, even you can use a file as background image.

It does more than you might think, just have a 7-day free trial to evaluate all its features and you will know how good it is.

NOW, change PDF background color from black to white in Adobe Acrobat

  1. Grab a free trial of Adobe Acrobat, install and fire up the app.
  2. Open the PDF in Acrobat.change bg color adobe 1
  3. Head to Edit> More> Background> Update.change bg color adobe 2
  4. From color and choose the background color as white. Also you can choose the page range to make background color of specific pages white. Click OK.change bg color adobe 3
  5. Then the color will be converted to white, click the Save button.change bg color adobe 4

In the case that the background color in your PDF is not added with Adobe Acrobat, Acrobat won’t be able to detect and update the color, but we still have a solution for this case.

change bg color adobe 5

  1. Open PDF in Adobe Acrobat, head to Edit.  All the contents in the PDF turn to be selectable, select the background and delete it to remove the original background color first.change bg color adobe 6
  2. Then head to More> Background> Add, choose a background color, like White.
  3. Save the file lastly.

A tip to change background color in a scanned PDF

  1. Open the scanned PDF in Adobe Acrobat, head to Scan & OCR> Recognize Text> In This File, recognize this file to make the file selectable.change pdf bg color acrobat 8
  2. Head to Edit PDF, select the background and remove it.change pdf bg color acrobat 9
  3. Head to More> Background> Add, change the background to any color you want and continue with OK.change pdf bg color acrobat 10
  4. Hit Save.change pdf bg color acrobat 11

Also, this is the tutorial video you want watch to convert background color in your PDFs with Adobe Acrobat, starting from 00:17,

Convert Black Background to White in PDF without Adobe Acrobat

It took me some time until I realized Adobe Acrobat was my best PDF solution. If you are now in this situation and want to convert your PDF background color to white without using Adobe Acrobat, I get it. Here are 2 alternative tools to use offline, even free.

1# Use Foxit (Paid)

Foxit is a supercharged alternative to Adobe Acrobat if you cannot fit yourself in Acrobat’s workflow. It looks like Microsoft Office Word, with ribbons on the top and secondary tools/options showed below when activated.

It lets you create, edit, convert, compare, flatten, review, sign, fill and protect your PDFs.

It uses a similar concept as Acrobat to change PDF background color.

NOW, change PDF black background to white for printing without Acrobat:

  1. Open the PDF in Foxit.
  2. Head to Organize> Background> Update.change pdf bg color foxit 1
  3. From color, choose White, or any color to change the current background color in Foxit.change pdf bg color foxit 2
  4. Hit OK, then hit Save button.

2# Use LibreOffice (Free)

Do you want any open source PDF background color change app, so you can do the job for free? Luckily, we have it. LibreOffice comes in with a lot of surprises.

It is used for editing documents like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF and so on on Windows, macOS. It is as powerful as Microsoft Office suite but serves for free. With its Print tool, we can print a PDF with black & white color, the printout comes with black font and white background. However, LibreOffice cannot change the background color in some PDFs, it seems to have something with how the PDF is originally created.

NOW, change PDF background color to white for free:

  1. Get this free copy of LibreOffice, install and fire it up.
  2. Open the PDF with it.black bg to white free 1
  3. Hover to File> Print.black bg to white free 2
  4. Go to LibreOffice> Color, tick Black & White.black bg to white free 3
  5. Choose Save as PDF, the black background in the PDF is now changed to white.black bg to white free 4

And you can watch this shorts for more information:

How to Change PDF Background Color to White Online Free?

Even though we knew or said some nice things about standalone programs to change the background, you or some others might still prefer to try online tool first, yes, it is totally understandable. But there is few tools available in our web browser to change PDF background colors, WorkinTool (formerly pdf2eveything) is a solid option. If it disappoints you or exceeds the limits, you can go ahead with Pdfcandle.

1# WorkinTool

This web application lets users to convert PDF, video and image online, also offers a lot of standalone utility tools such as file compressor, audio recorder, data recovery… It can change PDF background color to white or black, or others with ease. But the file should be within 0.5MB, and only 4 files can be processed at the same time. And one more thing to remind, it may pause color converting for server issues, you can re-upload the file and try again.

NOW, change PDF background color to white PDF online free:

  1. Navigate to this webpage: https://www.workintool.com/pdf-converter/change-pdf-background-color-online.html
  2. Upload the PDF file.change pdf bg color online 1
  3. Select the white background color you want to change to.change pdf bg color online 2
  4. Click Convert.
  5. Then download the PDF with the selected background color.change pdf bg color online 3

2# Pdfcandle

Another online free tool to change PDF background to white. Though not as user friendly as Workintool, it allows users change both font color and background color, with 6 colors available (black, white, green, blue, yellow, red.)

The max file size is 200 MB, you can upload a lot of PDF to change background color in this tool. But for your safety, don’t click through any 3rd party links on the web page.

  1. Navigate to https://pdfcandle.com/pdf_color.aspx, upload the PDF file.change bg color online 1
  2. Change background color to White.change bg color online 2
  3. Download the file to your local disk.change bg color online 3

How to Change PDF Background to White in MS Word?

If you don’t want a PDF editor, nor online PDF background changer app, there is another method to change the background color in your PDF. By converting your PDF into an editable Word document.

  1. Navigate to https://www.ilovepdf.com/pdf_to_word and upload your PDF. Or open the PDF in Microsoft Office Word.change bg color word 1
  2. Once the Word document is opened in Word app, select the background, delete it. The background color will be changed to white.change bg color word 2
  3. Save your file.

It is hard to pick the best from dozens of choices, but we have shortened the list for you, all you should do is to have a try on your machine and keep the one gets your job done the best.