Having trouble with Preview. Anyone know what is causing this?

[rovostrov]

Good afternoon, I am having an issue with Preview that is turning the pages
black with yellow letters when I am creating a PDF. I am using 10.15.7 and a 2012
macbook pro. If anyone has expeirenced this issue, please let me know if you were
able to fix it. It's driving me mad and seems to be occuring more often.

 

[0128672]

Is it only happening with images? Maybe a starting point is to check your Preview settings under Tools > Adjust Color to see if one of the settings might have been changed, or simply click the Reset button (if it's available in your version). You can also check under Tools > Profile to make sure the color profile is the right one for your display. Hopefully your display appears in the list.

 

[NoBoMac]

Just a guess here, but don't think it's Preview. It's the source material.

Looks like a scan of a microfiche. I seem to recall that this is a somewhat common problem. The scanner used to scan it in needs to be setup correctly (eg. positive vs negative image).

If you have the original scans, and not PDF, can put them into a photo editor and invert the colors, as @WildSky mentioned. Photoshop has an "Invert" command iirc.

ADD: or can try to export the page as TIFF/JPG, photo edit, add back the results.

 

[usagora]

when I am creating a PDF.

How are you creating this PDF exactly? Is this an image file you're exporting to PDF using Preview?

Drag the PDF file in question to your web browser. Does it open up in the web browser with black background and yellow text as well? If so, then it's not Preview but the file itself.

 

[0128672]

You can actually invert an image in Preview by switching the white and black points under Tools > Adjust Colors. Here's a quickie version of it. You can then convert it to black and white by sliding the Saturation level all the way to the left.

 

[rovostrov]

Thanks for all the replies!! This is a PDF I compiled from other PDFs and TIFFs. The original source images are fine, white background with black letters but when I try to merge them into one by dragging a new image over and dropping it into the thumbnail view, it will sometimes turn black with yellow letters. When I open the PDF, the options for Adjust Color & Adjust Size are both greyed out. I tried opening the pdf in my browser and also tried to export it to TIFF/JPG but either way didn't work, I get the same results with black background with yellow letters. Should there be any problems merging PDF's and TIFF's with varying letter and legal size pages?

 

[0128672]

Thanks for all the replies!! This is a PDF I compiled from other PDFs and TIFFs. The original source images are fine, white background with black letters but when I try to merge them into one by dragging a new image over and dropping it into the thumbnail view, it will sometimes turn black with yellow letters. When I open the PDF, the options for Adjust Color & Adjust Size are both greyed out. I tried opening the pdf in my browser and also tried to export it to TIFF/JPG but either way didn't work, I get the same results with black background with yellow letters. Should there be any problems merging PDF's and TIFF's with varying letter and legal size pages?

Pages sizes is a different question for now.

You'll only see the Adjust Colors tool when you've selected one of the images; they're not available for text. If you select one of the black background images, does that option become active?

 

[rovostrov]

Pages sizes is a different question for now.

You'll only see the Adjust Colors tool when you've selected one of the images; they're not available for text. If you select one of the black background images, does that option become active?

View attachment 1811792

If I am doing this correctly, when I open the pdf and select one of the black pages, the option for Adjst Color is greyed out and not available.

 

[0128672]

I see the difference now. When I was doing it, I opened only the image file in Preview. The image wasn't already in a multi-page PDF. I'm doing a little more testing to see if I can make those options appear when the image is dragged into an existing PDF with other pages.

 

[rovostrov]

I see the difference now. When I was doing it, I opened only the image file in Preview. The image wasn't already in a multi-page PDF. I'm doing a little more testing to see if I can make those options appear when the image is dragged into an existing PDF with other pages.

It's the strangest thing.. It seems to happen when I merge/add a legal size PDF into an existing PDF that has letter size pages, then reverts back to normal when I add another letter size page. Thanks for your help and input! I greatly appreciate it!

 

[0128672]

It's the strangest thing.. It seems to happen when I merge/add a legal size PDF into an existing PDF that has letter size pages, then reverts back to normal when I add another letter size page. Thanks for your help and input! I greatly appreciate it!

OK, that is strange. You're saying the TIFF images are ok once you insert another letter sized page? Yikes.

 

[rovostrov]

OK, that is strange. You're saying the TIFF images are ok once you insert another letter sized page? Yikes.

Yes, it's usually pdf's that were made from TIFF images. I can convert the TIFF's into PDF's and all is good but when I try to merge them into one large PDF, the legal size pages turn black. If I insert another letter size page, that page looks normal but the legal pages are still black. Is there anyway to reset Preview without reinstalling the OS or do you think that might be my best bet at this point?

 

[NoBoMac]

Have your tried to drag/drop the TIFF files into the document? No need to create a PDF to import into a PDF in Preview.

 

[rovostrov]

Have your tried to drag/drop the TIFF files into the document? No need to create a PDF to import into a PDF in Preview.

I have to send pdf's to my clients but the images I start with are multi-page tiffs that I can only save one page at a time. I complie the individual tiff pages, (page 1-10) and save that as one PDF. Later, I have to combine all my PDFs and merge them into one large PDF that contains everything. I have tried to drop the TIFF into preview on the PDF I'm creating and the same thing happens. It dosent seem to matter if its a PDF or a TIFF I drag and drop, it still turns the background black

 

[0128672]

This is very helpful detail to know and changes what I had understood the problem to be. To my knowledge there isn't a way to specify the page size in Preview unless maybe the first page imported is legal size. Edit: that doesn't make any difference; it's still 8.5 x 11 in the Show Inspector view, and the size can't be changed.

Here's a big guess of a what if ... what if in your merged PDF document (or even the TIFF PDF), you go to the Print dialog, tap on Show Details, and then select the paper size as legal, and then save as PDF from that Print dialog? Does it change anything?

Beyond that, I'm stumped.

 

[rovostrov]

This is very helpful detail to know and changes what I had understood the problem to be. To my knowledge there isn't a way to specify the page size in Preview unless maybe the first page imported is legal size. Edit: that doesn't make any difference; it's still 8.5 x 11 in the Show Inspector view, and the size can't be changed.

Here's a big guess of a what if ... what if in your merged PDF document (or even the TIFF PDF), you go to the Print dialog, tap on Show Details, and then select the paper size as legal, and then save as PDF from that Print dialog? Does it change anything?

Beyond that, I'm stumped.

Thanks for all your help! I gave that a shot and unfortunately it didn't work. I'm starting to think its just a case of running a modern OS on an older machine. I might try reinstalling the OS to see if that helps. I'll post back if I have any success

 

[0128672]

Well, one more thought. If your PDF document management need is professional, I wonder if trying Adobe Acrobat Pro might be an option. Preview is quite capable, but it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of Acrobat.

 

[rovostrov]

Well, one more thought. If your PDF document management need is professional, I wonder if trying Adobe Acrobat Pro might be an option. Preview is quite capable, but it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of Acrobat.

Thanks for the info! I probably should go with Acrobat since they are pretty much the industry standard dealing with PDF's. I'll check it out and hopefully it will solve the issue I've been having.

 

[funwithstuff]

Preview used to have a bug where greyscale images were inverted, black and white swapped. Most images are formatted as color, even if they are just black and white, so most people never noticed. Perhaps this is related, and some of your images are in a different format to the others, though not sure why they'd be black and yellow.

Either way, do report the bug so Apple can hopefully fix it. At least you can work around it using the Adjust option above.