I have a pdf document (a4 page with thext and pictures).
This is what I see with Acrobat Pro where an image is inserted:
https://1drv.ms/i/c/c1038811b211ebbc/EdFrhmz334NEm__ze8nUbEsB9KMpK3Qk9gTdOTMsXwKfFA?e=B6vnIO
This is what I see with Preview (MacOS Sequoia, latest release):
https://1drv.ms/i/c/c1038811b211ebbc/EefozaHnG49Jng-RbiuTZHMBsKlvsJEVUGcTvL1_NvxeOg?e=U7NElh
A surface missing. Great.
Is this normal?
Thanks
Maurizio
iMac 24″, macOS 15.7
Apple's Preview is based on much older PDF code and capabilities than what Adobe provides in the current Acrobat Pro. Consequently, though Preview is OK for most PDFs, there are some that it cannot handle properly and you should concede those to Acrobat Pro.
If Preview's View menu > Show Document Background is selectable, try that, but I don't have high hopes that will resolve this for you.
Apple's Preview is based on much older PDF code and capabilities than what Adobe provides in the current Acrobat Pro. Consequently, though Preview is OK for most PDFs, there are some that it cannot handle properly and you should concede those to Acrobat Pro.
If Preview's View menu > Show Document Background is selectable, try that, but I don't have high hopes that will resolve this for you.
No one here can speak to what Apple can or cannot make. The Preview application dates back to NeXTSTEP, and is based on much older PDF capability in the PDFKit framework from which it is built. At this point, Adobe would charge Apple royalties that would result in an operating system that is no longer free, and potentially break all the applications that have been built on that PDFKit framework.
If you are generating marginal compatible PDF documents from TeXstudio, then that is on you, and as you have seen, you are better served by current Adobe Acrobat software that can better handle marginal PDF compatibility.
PDFs that I have generated using TeXShop from the 2025 MacTeX distribution open just fine in Preview. PDFs that I have created using Pandoc by specifying pdflatex or LuaLaTeX engines convert Word documents to viewable PDFs in Preview.
Thanks,
Happy to meet a fellow TeXer! Well, of course I do not have any serious issue since I have tools to see the pdfs I care about. I do not have any problem with the text part of my TeX generated pdf's, only with some pictures I included with \includegraphics{mypicture.pdf} command, specifically with some surfaces and similar objects, as in my example. Curiously, if I open "mypicture.pdf" with Preview I see a perfect picture as with Acrobat, it's only when I include the picture into the TeX doc that I get an output which has an issue with Preview. Maybe it's the LaTeX compiler which creates some problem for Preview.
Thanks
Maurizio
Thanks. No, Show Document Background is not selectable.
However, I find this really strange. I produced my pdf as a LaTeX document (I do not know if you know anything about it...) using TexStudio dedicated editor. This includes a preview tool (that's all free, by the way) and with that I can see a correct pdf. A free tool is OK but great Apple Inc. can't make it?
Thanks again.
Maurizio
Pdf not same in Preview as in Acrobat
