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)
I forgot - my hardware:
MacBookPro, 13-inch, early 2011
2.7 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Intel HD Graphics 3000 512 MB
OS:
High Sierra 10.13.2.
Cmetzendorf wrote:
hope this works...
Thank for posting these files.
I opened them in Preview on my mac and they look fine, no black rectangles at all.
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?
Wow! This works for my mac mini 2011. Amazing. Great tip OakCan. Thanks!
Yes - great! Worked here for me too on a Mini mid 2011 - thx a lot!
As I stated previously, don't just post here, file feedback at the URL above stating your precise system configuration.
I've looked at the posted PDFs on several Macs and I can't reproduce the issue on the machines I've tried, but I don't have access to 2011 hardware.
I did the scans with Image Capture on the same system (a mac mini). The problem is specific to this system. I can access the disk over my home network with macOS file sharing then view the same files using Finder Quick Look and Preview on a macbook pro running High Sierra and they render fine. Oh well.
pjgrandinetti wrote:
Can you share how you would test this?
Sure.
Suppose you have a mac mini (call it A) showing the problem, and another mac (call it B) which does NOT show the problem.
We want to determine if the problem is hardware-specific (i.e. it happens on A because it is a certain mac mini model) or system specific (i.e. it happens on A because of some combination of software in the system).
Here is what I would do: boot A from the system installed in B, and vice-versa, and test.
My conjecture is that the machine B, if started from the drive in the machine A, would show the issue; whereas in the reciprocal case, A, booted from the drive in B, would display the pdf just fine.
How can you boot A using the drive of machine B?
In what follows, I will assume both machines have a Thunderbolt port (alternatively, one could do the same with Firewire). [If that is not an option, the same can still be done, but requires making a clone of the system drive to an external drive and booting the other machine from that external]
1) Turn both machines off, and connect them with the appropriate cable (Thunderbolt or Firewire)
2) Start B in Target Disk Mode (by holding T at startup). This makes B behave just as an external (Thunderbolt or Firewire) drive. Start A holding down the Option key, and select the B drive as the startup drive.
At this point, you are running machine A with the software installed on B. Test. Do pdf files look ok?
3) Shutdown A, then turn B off pressing and holding the power key.
Repeat step 2, now reversing the roles of A and B.
And just like in the initial post - the PDFs look just fine when I use e.g. chrome to open them, the page-preview in the side-bar of the preview app also looks fine. So it seems to be something wrong with preview - at least that's my best guess. If it was the file, it should be broken for all PDF viewers; or preview is more sensitive to subtle errors in the file...but then again, that's not good either if other apps have no problems with such errors.
pdf rendering as black rectangle
