Preview Renders Text In PDFs Blurry

Does the text from other applications, when exported/printed to PDF also show blurry text in Preview, but not Acrobat Reader DC?

Do you have these settings in Preview Preferences : PDF : Define 100% scale as: ⦿ 1 point equals 1 screen pixel ? and Viewing documents: √ Smooth text and line art ?

It looks like you are using an Arial font, and I would not recommend it for text destined to a PDF that is viewed with Preview. Use a different sans-serif font instead. Arial will show darker in Preview than in Acrobat Reader DC, and not just with macOS High Sierra either.

My suggestion about selecting the smoothing of text and line art was removed by Apple after El Capitan which is where I had Preview open, when I responded earlier.

All of Apple's applications are using the same PDFKit framework that is used in Preview to view PDF content. As you say it doesn't matter what font you use, then I can only recommend Acrobat Reader DC as the default PDF viewer, as there is no user fix that I can offer to correct this Preview issue that you are experiencing.

I have the same issue on my iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2015) since I installed High Sierra shortly after release.

Not only PDF I do create, but all PDF content I have.

Now it's High Sierra version 10.13.2 (17C88) and the problem is still there. It seems to be a very well known problem as it was reported many times, in different languages, to Apple.

It's indeed very annoying to me; I couldn't find any fix. Only solution seems to forget about Preview (!!) and switch to Google Chrome for instance. But it's not a solution to me.

Also, after the update to High Sierra, I lost all the comments I had included in a PDF document (important 60pp work document ...) with Preview with the previous 10.12 version (up to date) I had before. Only empty sticky notes in my document now. I guess other users have the same kind of problems.

==> Really no bug fix coming...?

It's not easy to switch to another software after decades (...) using Preview being quite satisfied with it.

Thanks if anyone has information about this.

I had the same problem. I noticed if I took my iPhone and rotated it 90° to either side while viewing the PDF, the PDF became crisp and readable. I could turn it back 90° and kept the crisp view. There is some sort of glitch when looking at a PDF on iPhone.

I can sadly only confirm this thread (10.13.3). Bold characters like in a Excel document exported to PDF are completely unreadable unless zoomed in several times. Then still. All normal when pdf opened with Adobe. Never had this issue before.

OS X continues its downwards fall. With each update/upgrade I come across flaws, issues, instabilities in many OS X apps and with worked well before. Like they never had time to really debug their os's before release. Twenty years ago (Apple addict since early nineties but it is getting intoxicating...), this would simply be unthinkable within Apple Inc.

I am still 'acting like a die hard Apple fan' but doing so results in quiet some collateral damage. More and more...

The hours I lost to find out what goes wrong mounts to an incredible figure.

Hop on to the next frustration!

I have a 2011 iMac 21". I opened a PDF in preview and it's really blurry... what's interesting is that the same PDF on my MacBook Pro 13Inch early 2015 looks great.

I realize that my Macbook has a retina display and my iMac does not, but it's not a low res issue because other text, or when opening with Acrobat reader it's much clearer than the Preview.

Its a long standing problem in Preview and High Sierra, still awaiting attention.

Sierra was fine.

I have the same issue, Preview version 9.0 (909.17). Unbelievable, Apple. It's Microsoft that's supposed to be imitating you, not vice versa!

I'm so glad I've always stuck with Adobe across platforms and especially grateful I never took to Preview for pdfs in particular....