Inspiring

Answered

Acrobat on screen rendering incorrect

Forum|Forum|1 month ago
July 6, 2026
11 replies
365 views

PDFs we’re exporting from InDesign have tables with various colors and shades.

More than one person at our client are seeing and marking the white space between only these two colors as missing.

They are on Macs. On the 4 PCs I’ve checked in my operation they all show as you see the first picture below. I asked them to zoom in to check it and was specific about not just using the iOS zoom and using Acrobat’s zoom, and it is still missing. The 2nd picture is below is a screen shot sent by them at 300% zoom! I am completely stumped.

Does anyone know what might be causing this?

Thanks for any help,
Ken

Correct answer Dave Creamer of IDEAS

I just exported one of my InDesign table to PDF and looked at it in Acrobat Pro (on Mac) and Preview. Both looked normal.

Really need to see a sample PDF. I would include the InDesign file too. (Just copy the table to a new document and replace the text is necessary.) If you make a new file, please check it on the Mac to see if the issue exists on that file before you upload the files.

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Correct answer

Community Expert

I just exported one of my InDesign table to PDF and looked at it in Acrobat Pro (on Mac) and Preview. Both looked normal.

Really need to see a sample PDF. I would include the InDesign file too. (Just copy the table to a new document and replace the text is necessary.) If you make a new file, please check it on the Mac to see if the issue exists on that file before you upload the files.

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

Sasha003

Participating Frequently

It might also be worth asking one of the affected Mac users to temporarily disable Enhance Thin Lines and GPU acceleration in Acrobat's display settings to see if the gap disappears. I've seen rendering artifacts that only showed up on certain hardware, even though the PDF itself was perfectly fine. That would at least help confirm whether it's a display issue rather than an export problem.

K

KenWKAuthor

Inspiring

Turning off the Enhance Thin Lines makes a small change on my computer, but still no where near completely disappearing like they’re seeing. I don’t have any GPU settings, likely because I’m working virtually.

I’ve emailed to see if they’re willing to try these suggestions. Will post back if I hear back.

Thanks

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

Can you upload a sample PDF with a problem table?

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

Is the table made IN InDesign or imported from elsewhere (e.g Illustrator).

If it the table was done in Illustrator, I would suspect that the white “gap” may have been erroneously assigned overprint. If they are viewing this in Acrobat > Print Production > Output Preview, see if there’s a difference if Simulate Overprint is toggled on/off.

K

KenWKAuthor

Inspiring

They are set in InDesign and the cell rules creating the “gutter” are definitely turned on.

Thanks

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

Are the Mac users using the default Preview or Acrobat Reader/Pro?

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

K

KenWKAuthor

Inspiring

Good question! I’d forgotten about the preview. I’m nearly sure it’s Acrobat because they’re using Acrobat markup. But I’ll find out.

K

KenWKAuthor

Inspiring

Wait, my bad. They’re in Acrobat because I specified using Command, Plus or View > Marquee Zoom when zooming and one of them tried both with no joy.

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