Odd Display of PDF Created with Pagesn '09

Question

Odd Display of PDF Created with Pagesn '09

I create the monthly newsletter for a Macintosh user group, Capitol Macintosh of Austin, Texas (CapMac), using Pages '09. The newsletter is exported from Pages as a PDF and is then made available on the CapMac website <http://www.capmac.org/>.

A weird problem is that the newsletter displays as intended when viewed in Preview but not when viewed in either Adobe Reader or Acrobat. In Reader and Acrobat some of the included text displays as light gray and not the specified black.

I've found a weird work-around which is to change, in Pages, the text which displays incorrectly from black(#000000) to a dark gray. (#191919) and then re-export the PDF.

So, the question is am I dealing with an error in Pages or an error in Reader or Acrobat?

The version that is posted on the website has three instaces of text changed from black to dark gray. These are on Page 2 (the text between the bluebonnets), Page 7 (the article), and Pages 9 and 10 (the article)

Many thanks for any thoughts and/or suggestions..

MacBook Pro 17", Mac OS X (10.5.6), 1.67 GHZ -- 17" -- 2 GB RAM

Posted on Apr 18, 2009 7:31 PM

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Answer 1

Apr 23, 2009 6:32 PM in response to James_L. Ryan

TaliesinSoft,

What you are looking at is an effect of color management where the black text has been changed to a cmyk mix that results in a dark grey.

Why it is happening selectively I can't say, I would have said in the case of the bluebonnet example because it is over the tinted background but then it has also done it on plain white background.

You could try saving the newsletter to a .ps file and using Acrobat Pro (if you have it) to convert the file to a .pdf using your own selection of color management and distiller settings.

Peter

I gather you think that if Frank Lloyd Wright, if he had lived long enough, would have been a Mac User? 🙂

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