OSX Monterey Preview problem

Hi Frigatebird,

It sounds like PDFs aren't the correct size in preview and are too zoomed in or cropped. We're glad you've joined us in Apple Support Communities. Let's see if this helps.

Follow the steps in If PDFs or images aren’t the correct size in Preview on Mac. You'll want to make sure that "1 Image pixel equals 1 screen pixel" is selected. The above link will guide you on where to find that preference. 

If the issue remains after following those steps, let us know what steps you had a chance to try from above.

We hope that helps with your question and take care!

Hi Frigatebird

There is no solution at the moment.

This particular issue has been reported by many users, not sure how far back it goes but I think at least to Catalina, possibly earlier.

We see many students here that report this as a problem when viewing certain PDFs in Apple Preview and our own faculty Macs have PDF Expert installed, specifically to view and print PDF's that are otherwise cropped in Apple Preview.

The problem seems to be that the PDF renderer that Preview uses can't rescale text containers and image containers accurately when rescaling some PDF documents.

Your example of page 10 of the Nikon document shows the text element container on the right and the image container (the icons on the left) have not scaled to fit the default page width and now the container with the text on the right is overlapping the container with icon images on the left, making it appear that the page is cropped.

The contents of the containers have been rescaled but the containers themselves have not and the result is as you see.

This effect may appear on any page of a PDF document that has large text containers adjacent to large image containers and the document has to be scaled down to fit the default page width.

The actual containers are invisible but they do exist for the different elements in the PDF and it's these overlapping containers when the image is rescaled to a default page size that Apple Preview has trouble with.

It has been suggested by Apple support that the problem might be confined to the PDFs created originally using particular applications and there may well be something in this because we do see this more with PDFs created using Acrobat Distiller than with Adobe PDF library for example.

We spoke to Apple Support many times about this over the last few years and their reply has always been that Apple Preview is just a basic viewer tool and that to rescale, view and print a PDF properly we need to use a professional PDF viewer/editor that can handle the different elements inside a PDF and that can rescale to print size accurately.

Safari browser uses a different engine to display PDF files and which appears to handle these re-scaling tasks accurately.

All you can do, beside using a different app to view and print rescaled PDF's properly, is click the "Get Support" button at the top of this webpage and make yet another direct customer bug report about this problem, or follow this link to leave a customer feedback comment:

Product Feedback - Apple

Use the reporting link for macOS under the macOS Apps section.

Maybe if enough users highlight this issue then Apple might look to improve the PDF renderer that Apple Preview uses.

Will.

Frigatebird wrote:

It is interesting to note that I have reviewed the same file on my mid-2012 MBP running Mojave and on which I can still run Adobe Acrobat. I have opened the file both under Acrobat and then under Preview. In Acrobat it is perfect, in Preview the problem shows up

I would suggest you use the free Adobe Acrobat Reader DC. It renders your example file correctly.

That Nikon document shows it was produced by Acrobat Distiller 5.01 for Macintosh which is a 20-year old product. This PDF was actually created in Jan 2003. It is also a linearized (fast web view) document. Due to the eccentricities of PDF content, Apple's Preview cannot open or even display every PDF accurately, which differentiates it from Adobe's current Acrobat products that can.

I get the same result as you do on my M1 24" iMac. There must be something in the PDF which upsets preview. It looks fine in Waterfox browser.

Here's a screenshot

Do you view Single Page or Continuous Scroll? Try each and see what happens.

I've tried both on my M1 iMac and no cropping appeared.

+1. 🧠