PDFs are blurry / unsharp when opened with Preview.

Question

8ung Author

Level 1

16 points

PDFs are blurry / unsharp when opened with Preview.

This happens with:

documents that are scanned, even at 400 dpi and with two different scanners.
Word docx that are saved as PDFs
Excel xlsx that are saved as PDFs

Does not happen with:

Safari Webpages that are exported as PDFs
Downloaded PDFs (e.g. utility bills, bank statements)

Problem started when my MacBook Pro was upgraded to macOS 10.13.6 and Preview 10.0

PDFs opened with previous version of macOS and Preview were not blurry / unsharp.

Tried different qfilters with Compression Qualities of 0.5 and 0.75 - but I am not trying to compress PDFs, just open them and have them look good.

What could be the problem / what can I do to resolve this?

Posted on Jul 29, 2022 1:36 AM

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Answer 1

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,290 points

Jul 29, 2022 5:03 AM in response to 8ung

If the documents that are blurry in Preview, are also blurry when opened in the current version of Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, then it is a PDF content origination issue and not an Apple or Adobe application issue.

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Answer 2

BDAqua

Level 10

250,253 points

Jul 29, 2022 2:49 PM in response to 8ung

What OS version>

Could it be Scale setting?

Change PDF preferences in Preview on Mac - Apple Support

Has Reduce Size/Quality been invoked?

Compress a PDF in Preview on Mac - Apple Support

To find out if it's system wide or user specific, try this...

Open System Preferences>Users & Groups, unlock the lock, click on the little plus icon, make a new admin account, log out & into the new account.

Does it work in the new account?

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Answer 3

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,290 points

Jul 30, 2022 7:08 AM in response to 8ung

There was a reason that I wanted you to open the PDF with Adobe Acrobat Reader DC on the Mac as Windows uses a different default screen DPI setting that Reader uses when viewing PDF content there.

What scanner? What scanning software? Does the scanner allow you different settings for scanned content (e.g. text, grayscale, color, etc)? Those PDF bills were likely never scanned, but direct from source to PDF with commercial software. Those exported webpages are not scanned either…

I would not be too quick to rule out your scanner or its scanning software settings.

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Answer 4

8ung Author

Level 1

16 points

Jul 29, 2022 1:54 PM in response to VikingOSX

Thank you VikingOSX for your reply.

PDF made with my scanner looks blurry when opened with Preview on my Mac, but looks good when opened on a Windows computer with Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Downloaded PDFs (e.g. utility bills, bank statements) look good when opened on my Mac with Preview.

Webpages that are exported as PDFs with Safari look good when opened on my Mac with Preview.

The evidence seems to rule out the scanner and the PDF documents as the culprits. The only things left are the Mac OS and the Preview application, or?

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PDFs are blurry / unsharp when opened with Preview.

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