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iBooks on iPad not showing images in PDFs

I have a bunch of PDFs that are synched to my iPad.
On Preview, the PDFs look perfectly fine.

However in iBooks, on the iPad I find that about a third of the PDFs show all the text, but none of the images.

Anyone have an idea what could be going on here?

Posted on Jun 26, 2010 3:16 AM

Reply
41 replies

Nov 30, 2010 10:40 AM in response to Roy Wagner

Hello GeezerRoy,

I'm writing from Safari Books Online. In September and October 2010, we reprocessed all of our PDFs to be compatible with iPad. If you have any PDFs you downloaded from Safari Books Online that are missing images, please write to techsupport@safaribooksonline.com and we will make sure to get you replacement PDFs.

Best,
Molly Sharp
Safari Books Online

Jan 23, 2011 7:51 AM in response to Scott Nimmo

I had the same issue with a PDF which was looking fine in Preview, but when reading it on my iPad all images were black. I tried 'save as' in Preview and 'Print as PDF' but the images remained black. While digging a bit deeper I found a solution which fixed the issues by creating a new Quartz Controller. In order to do so, do the following

1. Open the 'ColorSync Utility' in Applications/Utilities
2. Click the '+' sign to add a new Profile and name it 'iOS'
3. Click on the small triangular icon (in a gray circle) on the right hand side of the newly created filter and select 'Add Color Management Component --> Intermediate transform'
4. Change the options for 'Intermediate transform' so that it reads:
"Profile" "Photoshop 5 Default CMYK" for "All data" "All objects"
5. Click the triangle again and select 'Add Domain Information' and only check 'Applications'
6. You do not need to save the filter as it is already saved while creating it.

Now, open the troublesome PDF in Preview, choose 'Save as' and choose 'PDF' as format 'iOS' as (the newly created) Quartz filter. When you save the PDF it will work on iOS devices and will show the images properly. The downside is that the pdf itself will become significantly larger (4 times in my case) but that's probably the price to pay for not using JPEG2000.

Jan 25, 2011 3:27 PM in response to Scott Nimmo

This thread keeps going.....

I'm assisting a magazine client to get PDF issues onto the iPad. Using Adobe Acrobat Pro 8.1.7., we take a 120 page color magazine and shrink to 15MB or so. Since these are downloaded, the uncompressed 120MB is not acceptable, at least for the delivery performance we want. One month ago we got the undisplayed image problem, but worked around it using menu picks Document, Reduce File Size, selecting "Acrobat 8.0 or later" setting. Tried the same this month with a new issue, and got the same problem. I then got around it by using Document, Reduce File Size, selecting "Acrobat 5.0 or later" setting. I then have a 15MB file that looks great and is viewable on the iPad. At this rate, in 2 more months, I'll not be able to create viewable PDF files for iPads! 8^)

The fixes mentioned earlier using Preview and "Save As" do create viewable files, but the files bloat up too big for us.

Jan 27, 2011 2:32 PM in response to Scott Nimmo

Is there any chance of Apple fixing the problem with the way they display PDFs on their portables? PCs and Androids don't have these issues, so you'd think they'd want to try to catch up with the competition's funtionality. The other thing I've noticed is that PDFs created in MS Office from the Save As... functionality in 2007 and 2010 often don't work on the IOS devices. Apple - support the standards like PDF PROPERLY! Not this half-baked rubbish where users have to fiddle with files before they can view them. This is a BASIC function people rightfully expect to work on any tablet - saving them printing out something they want to read in PDF.

GET IT RIGHT!

Apr 29, 2011 8:12 AM in response to Scott Nimmo

I am creating prototype picture books using CS5 inDesign. I create all illustrations in CS5 Photoshop, save as PNG and place over color backgrounds made with inDesign tools. I export as PDF or Interactive PDF looking perfect on my Mac, but like others in this forum once synched over to my iPad (iOS 4.3.2) all images disappear leaving only the color bkgrds and text in perfect layouts.


I tried the "Save as . ." even using Acrobat Prof. but same problem. Haven't done the "Quartz filter" routine, BUT what is a real irony! I create a document using the same graphics in MS Word 2004, Ver. 11.6.1, Save as PDF and iPad displays all graphics and text perfectly.

Apr 29, 2011 9:10 AM in response to PFortman

OK as follow up to my previous post: Opened my inDesign PDF using Preview and did "Save as" using Quartz filter Create Generic PDFX-3 Document. File increase was moderate going from 18.3 to 24.6 MB. Synched to the iPad and now the graphics and text display perfectly. This is a 12 page horz. layout picture book with full page hi-resolution graphics and text on the graphics.

iBooks on iPad not showing images in PDFs

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