iBooks on iPad not showing images in PDFs

I'm having the same problem with PDFs that I get from O'Reilly's Safari Books.

A fix from Apple would be nice, if it is possible. Until then the Preview, Save option will have to do.

Same problem with PDFs purchased from Apress

I wonder - is there some sort of "best practice" for PDFs for the iPad iBooks reader? Eg- which version of the PDF standard, etc? It'd be nice if someone put them together as an Acrobat Pro PDF Optimizer setting preset.

I've googled around to see if anyone has done anything like this- not much detail out there.

This worked perfectly! Thank you google for finding this thread and thank you poster for the answer!

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

Roy, I am trying to view PDF's on my iPad but all the pics are showing as grey shadows. None of the PDF converters in iTunes work. Can you help me solve this problem.

Found a easy solution to this issue. If you have a Mac open the pdf in preview and then save it as another file name. Now place this new file onto the IPad.

I have not played with the files yet in Windows (Sorry).

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.

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.

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!

Just adding my experience, not much luck with Acrobat Optimizer etc but like Jacks Tech Corner easiest way is to "save as" in Preview. I had a <1MB pdf blow out to >10MB doing this but a "reduce file size" in acrobat pulls it back to just over 1MB. All images good on iPad after that.
AM

I'm positive I'm in the minority, but I'm a PC user with an iPad and I'm having this same problem with PDFs. I can see the text in the file and minor graphics, but pages with larger graphics (such as color maps) come up completely blank on the ipad although they are perfect on my computer.

Anyone know how I can fix the problem using my pc?