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My energy provider goes around bragging about how green they are. However, their invoices are using some combination of colors that prevents me to quickly print it with minimal ink.

Until now, I used to open the PDF in photoshop, grayscale and print, but that blue headers (see the sample) turns pretty dark even in grayscale/eco-mode. There are multiple of those, and there is also a blueish rectangle that is the graph of what I consumed on the past months.

I'd like a brain-dead one-trick that allow me to print those invoices (they also send on using purplish, the same tonality used in Slack) in a way that I can eventually read the text (which is black on white) but make these blue/purple rectangles go away.

I could lose the text those boxes contains, although I'd prefer to keep the labels, even if in really soft gradient. Not only that, but I also searched if it is possible to remove shapes element from a PDF, for example using an online tool, but the only I found allowed me to delete the text/content.

header sample

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  • I had to blurr the text cause it had some personal details.
    – S. W. G.
    Jul 1, 2022 at 21:40
  • @user287001 this worked well for the most parts, didn't know I could apply by channel, very useful. The only leftover is with deep blues in the graph, this shade seems almost unaffected.
    – S. W. G.
    Jul 1, 2022 at 22:53

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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In Photoshop dialog Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation allows you to make it affect only a selected color range, say blue, and turn it to less saturated and lighter. Try it as a first aid. An Example:

enter image description here

The lower version has got the shown Hue/Saturation adjustment.

If you have several colors you can repeat the adjustment with different color selector setting. Photoshop allows you to record the whole process as an action for fast access later.

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  • can I add a selected color, exaple picking it from the image or entering the relative hex?
    – S. W. G.
    Jul 1, 2022 at 23:19
  • @S.W.G. The dialog has color pickers. Adding color is possible, but it makes the affected hue range wider. It's hue range which is selected. As well one could move the hue range sliders manually. In master mode saturation and lightness sliders affect to all colors, hue range sliders do not affect. Check Photoshop User's Guide for detailed instructions. You can also make a selection for ex with a rectangular marquee tool or magic wand and adjust hue/saturation or levels or curves in that selection. You can accept (=OK) one adjustment and make another.
    – user82991
    Jul 2, 2022 at 0:18
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  • Image > Mode > Greyscale
  • Then Image > Adjustments > Levels (quicker with Command/Ctrl+L)

Move the middle arrow to the left until you're happy.

enter image description here

This will lighten dark text as well. So you may need to find a happy medium. Hard to say without seeing the full document.

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  • what are levels affecting, exactly?
    – S. W. G.
    Jul 1, 2022 at 23:20

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