PDFs rendering as black rectangle in Preview

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Level 1

9 points

PDFs rendering as black rectangle in Preview

Almost all my PDF documents are rendering as black rectangles in the Preview.app. The file is shown correctly for a glimpse and then a blackened. Opening the exact same file in Firefox or Adobe Reader displays it properly.

This problem occurred with many users before. For some, the solution was to recalibrate the display colors. This does not help in my case.

Please notice the thumbnails in the screenshot and the fact that the black rectangle is not shown in the first few lines of the first page of the document.

I am running macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 on an 27 inch iMac 10,1 (late 2009), Intel Core 2 Duo with 3,06 GHz and 8 GB RAM.

Does someone have any idea how to solve this? I am a university student and working a lot with the Preview app, this is really influencing my everyday workflows.

Posted on Nov 12, 2018 3:04 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,218 points

Nov 12, 2018 8:27 AM in response to JoStark

Apple has not updated their display postscript/PDFKit PDF version support in many years. It is stuck on PDF v1.3/1.4 and may behave adversely when confronted with PDF documents that use content that Preview simply doesn't understand how to render properly.

This is likely the reason that the current release of Adobe Acrobat Reader DC can image your PDF correctly, and other non-PDFKit based PDF readers that use newer libraries can do this too.

After quitting Preview, look in your local Library/Caches folder to see if there is a Preview folder, or com.apple.Preview bundle there, and if so, move both to the Trash. If reopening that PDF that produced the black content images the PDF correctly, then we have found a fix. If not, use Acrobat Reader DC.

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Answer 2

BDAqua

Level 10

250,253 points

Nov 12, 2018 6:36 AM in response to JoStark

Whew, plenty of people with this problem, but to be sure...

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?

Maybe this?

[OFFICIAL] PDFelement for Mac | Free Download PDF Editing Software

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Answer 3

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,218 points

Nov 12, 2018 7:19 AM in response to JoStark

This is curious, as in all the years that I have been using OS X/macOS, and a litany of different PDF creators, I have never encountered this Preview issue.

I always suggest trying the same PDF in the current release of Adobe Acrobat Reader DC (v2019+ for Mojave), as Preview does not offer the full PDF support that Adobe maintains in Reader DC.

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