Preview.app dropping embedded images in PDFs

Alec Jacobson

May 05, 2011

weblog/

Recently I had a very annoying problem that Preview.app was not displaying images embedded in a pdf in the correct order or at all. The bug in Preview.app seems to be a computability issue. I used the following steps in Adobe Acrobat Pro to fix PDFs that were not displaying correctly in Preview.app:
  1. Open broken.pdf in Adobe Acrobat Pro
  2. Go to Advanced > PDF Optimizer...
  3. Under Make compatible with: choose Acrobat 5.0 or later
  4. Uncheck Images
  5. Uncheck Fonts
  6. Uncheck Transparency
  7. Uncheck Discard Objects
  8. Check Discard User Data
  9. Under Discard User Data make sure only Discard hidden layer content and flatten visible layers is checked. Update: May also check Discard private data of other applications
  10. Uncheck Clean Up
  11. Hit OK and save as fixed.pdf
This should fix your PDF. If your PDF shows missing images in Preview only after optimizing with Acrobat pro then try using the above as a starting point before tweaking optimization settings. It seems the key is to be sure Discard Objects > Discard embedded print settings is unchecked and Discard User Data > Discard hidden layer content and flatten visible layers is checked when optimizing.