PDFs from InDesign not showing correctly in Chrome Browser

Report · Sep 29, 2023

In an InDesign document I've added these text frames. They're filled with a spot color set to 25% opacity.

They've been exported to PDF and published online. They appear as expected when viewed in Safari and Firefox, but are not rendered correctly in Chrome:

The problem seems consistent across three Mac OS (Sonoma 14) users, but one Windows user sees the PDF correctly in Chrome.

Any trouble shooting leads are very welcome.

Report · Sep 29, 2023

Chrome is not compliant with the PDF standards for displaying PDFs.

Generally, no browser can accurately display PDFs, but there is some change in the industry to make browsers behave better.

Different browsers, different versions, and different operating systems will give different results.

Also, with your specific problem, browsers do not display printing ink colors, only RGB. They are designed for websites, not for viewing documents, so RGB is their known color space.

So set your PDF conversion options to covert your print colors to sRGB and that might solve the problem.

But then again, don't expect perfection because browsers weren't designed to display PDFs and other document file formats, only HTML websites.

View solution in original post

Report · Sep 29, 2023

Do you need to use spot colors? How does it look when you use rgb or cmyk? You can use the Ink Manager under the Swatches fly-out menu to convert your spot colors to process colors.

Report · Sep 29, 2023

Hi Luke. Thanks for taking the time to answer.
No, the spot colors are just for convenience because we use the same scheme across several apps and have them in a library. But I've also used the same spot color in header rows in tables, also set at 25% opacity, and they render just fine.
I'll give youjr solution a go, but I also found another possible solution in a thread with a similar-ish sounding problem:

Report · Sep 29, 2023