Pdf's are rendering as black rectangles in Preview.app. Notice the thumbnails in the screenshot. They also render thusly if I tap the spacebar in finder for a Quick Look. I have tested 20 or so pdf's. I have not tested all of the pdf's on this system, obviously (far too many). Opening the exact same file in, e.g., Firefox displays it properly.
Mac mini, macOS High Sierra (10.13)
Cmetzendorf wrote:
As for the others where this was tested. So what could be the reason? Preview using the graphics hardware - Intel HD Graphics 3000 512 MB - in strange ways?
Possibly.
I guess there is a way to test that hypothesis, if you have at least temporary access to another mac (that does not show the problem with these PDF files).
Start your mac in Target Disk Mode, and use it to boot the other mac (using a Thunderbolt or Firewire cable, depending on the mac models in question).
This way you would be using your own mac's OS and user accounts, but running on the other mac's hardware, including the graphics card.
If the pdf look fine, then it pretty much guarantees that it is related to Preview and your mac's graphics card.
If they show black, then it is something in your mac's software installation.
(You can also do the same test in reverse, in which case black pdf means something with the graphics card.)
Cmetzendorf wrote:
As for the others where this was tested. So what could be the reason? Preview using the graphics hardware - Intel HD Graphics 3000 512 MB - in strange ways?
Possibly.
I guess there is a way to test that hypothesis, if you have at least temporary access to another mac (that does not show the problem with these PDF files).
Start your mac in Target Disk Mode, and use it to boot the other mac (using a Thunderbolt or Firewire cable, depending on the mac models in question).
This way you would be using your own mac's OS and user accounts, but running on the other mac's hardware, including the graphics card.
If the pdf look fine, then it pretty much guarantees that it is related to Preview and your mac's graphics card.
If they show black, then it is something in your mac's software installation.
(You can also do the same test in reverse, in which case black pdf means something with the graphics card.)
Hi, I had the same problem with my macbook pro 2011 when I upgraded to High Sierra.
Finally, I just calibrate my display color and the black rectangle disappears.
Go to the System Preferences -> Displays -> Color -> Calibrate.
I have the same problem with High Sierre 10.13.2 on my MacBook Pro 15" early 2011.
Saved a copy of the pdf which works perfectly without the black rectangle... to find that after this copy, even the original works now fine !!!
It's puzzling but I appreciate this easy way to get rid of the problem. There is no need to convert to png and back to pdf, only create a copy and delete it.
Sorry, my idea works only on one page pdfs. For the others, you need to turn off "Automatic graphics switching" in the "Energy Saver" preferences, provided your Mac has two graphic cards. If there is only an Intel HD Graphics 3000 inside, there is no hope.
Thankyou oakcan! This worked!
Re: pdf rendering as black rectangle
Hi, I had the same problem with my macbook pro 2011 when I upgraded to High Sierra.
Finally, I just calibrate my display color and the black rectangle disappears.
Go to the System Preferences -> Displays -> Color -> Calibrate.
This happens to me too -- when I rotate the document in the scanning software prior to saving it. If I scan a document and save as is, it works OK, and I can rotate it in Preview and re-save it and it is OK. But if I use HP Easy Scan to scan the document and I rotate it there in the HP software, the saved file appears blank in Preview -- and opens OK in Adobe.
So my solution is to only rotate in Preview, not in HP Easy Scan.
Try opening these same pdf while booted in Safe Mode, and while booted normally and logged in to a different user account. Same behavior?
That particular pdf was a scan created by Image Capture, the macOS app. It appears to be the scans created with Image Capture that have this problem. Just viewed some downloaded pdf's that rendered properly.
[I edited this post].
I also have no problem opening the pdf you posted.
Makes me think there might be a software conflict with something you may have installed on your mac.
I suggest you run the diagnostic tool Etrecheck and post its report here.
I'm having the exact same problems with pdfs generated by a variety of different sources. It can NOT be a single app that is generating bad pdfs but rather high sierra has a bug in rendering pdfs. Hopefully this will be fixed soon as many of us need access to our pdfs. One work around, of course, is that Adobe acrobat seems to open the files correctly.
I think it is unlikely to be APFS related, but you don't have to believe me.
You can test your hypothesis that it is APFS rather easily.
Take a file that opens correctly on one machine, copy it to a thumb drive and try to open it from the thumb drive on the other machine.
If it does not open, then it has nothing to do with APFS. If it opens correctly, then copy this file from the thumb drive to somewhere in your APFS formatted drive and try to open it from there.
ChrisS69 wrote:
This is my configuration. Would that be sufficient information?
That tells us about the hardware and OS, but since some people see the problem and others don't, even on identical hardware, it seems pretty clear that this is a software problem.
One way to know more would be to post the report by the diagnostic tool Etrecheck.
Luis,
Just booted the system. I shut it down last night. Boot lasted ~ 16min, which is much longer than normal. The grey screen with the Apple logo and the progress bar was visible the whole time. After logging in, it was necessary to open the Displays preference pane and tweak the underscan, which had reset back to zero. My display is a Sony TV connected via HDMI. The black pdf problem is gone, as is my black login screen problem, which is interesting. I have scanned /var/log/system.log, nothing jumps out at me.
All's well that ends well.
How about with other simple PDFs on the web like:
https://kopps.blob.core.windows.net/production//Flavors.pdf
Also, do you have a stock or third party graphics card?
Screen shot of the above in Preview:
Logged in a different user, viewed a "black" pdf. The problem is still there. It was created by Image Capture under OS 10.11. Get Info shows "Encoding Software: Mac OS X 10.11.6 Quartz PDFContext."
pdf rendering as black rectangle
