Does Acrobat Reader support color management systems?

[Guest]

Adobe products like Illustrator and Photoshop support color management systems.

But the Acrobat reader does not seem to support it, right?

I'm wondering if there is any support plan.

I do not want to hear the frustrating answer to using Acrobat Pro.

[sdinweoinasd9384152]

My display is only around 107% of sRGB gamut, so it is not wide gamut. The problem I think is maybe that the PDF is DeviceRGB and Reader is applying the display calibration profile to the working space, while Pro is maybe applying sRGB to the working space.

The reason why I think this is because the PDF with DeviceRGB has its transformation of colors in Reader looking similar to how it looks in PDF-Xchange Editor when I set working space to the display profile in the settings. 

[Per Berntsen]

@Dov Isaacs wrote:

Adobe Acrobat Reader indeed supports color management. If the documents look different, it is because the color preferences and/or viewing mode (such as overprint preview) are set differently.

I uninstalled Acrobat Reader DC, then installed version 11.0.21, which displays correct colors.

So color management in Reader DC must be broken.

As mentioned in my previous post, the PDF file used in the screenshot was made in InDesign, with RGB images, plain text, and no transparency. It was exported as an interactive PDF.

For the record, I previously had Acrobat Pro 11 and Reader 11 installed together on two computers, and I never had any issues.

[Tobias5FAE]

I can confirm. Acrobat DC (even pro) doesn't handle colour management correct any more (on Windows 10). There seems to be a bug.
I can import the same pdf in Photoshop, which asks me wether to use the embedded profile or to skip the profile.
When I use the embedded profile the colours look as intended.
When I skip the profile (German Version: Eingebettetes Profil verwerfen) Photoshop shows the same false colours as Acrobat DC.
My old Acrobat 8 professional btw. has no issues regarding colour management.

I hope this will be fixed soon.

[Tobias5FAE]

Adobe Acrobat Reader indeed supports color management. If the documents look different, it is because the color preferences and/or viewing mode (such as overprint preview) are set differently.

(Also, FWIW, you should not try to have parallel installations of Reader and Acrobat or multiple versions of same of different releases on a single system. It is a recipe for “issues.”)

By @Dov Isaacs

If you had read the posts of the other useres you wouldnt have written this...
And why is this again flagged as a correct answer?

There is a bug in colour managment of Acrobat DC on Windows machines with calibrated monitors which use not the windows icc profile for these monitors.

[ZBalling]

Still is the case 3 years later. While ICC profile inside the files is applied, the monitor/TV ICC profile assigned in colorcpl.exe is not applied. Latest Windows 11 Moment 5 and latest x64 Acrobat.

[dblues]

Same problem here with a wide gammut monitor. Reader DC displays oversaturated colors.

I found that Edge is a good alternative if you want to view color managed PDFs on windows

[Jordan$]

October 2024, problem still persists. I'm on a hardware calibrated display. Embedded profiles and setting color management in Acrobat are both ignored and PDFs are not color managed. The issue appears to be with Acrobat's security settings which have been pointed out and ignored. Adding the file path the security advanced settings in preferences allowed my PDF to be displayed in the correct color space. Then I opened it again and it wasn't. Then I toggled off and on the security settings and magically it worked again. ...until it didn't.

Obviously it's a bug, a bug that breaks color management in a core application that absolutely needs to be color managed.

[Meenakshi Negi]

Hi Jordan$,

Thank you for reaching out.

Could you please share more information about the issue you are referring to here? It would be really helpful if you could share the screen recording of the behavior that you experienced and share the sample PDFs so we can replicate it on our end. 

Share the Acrobat Reader and OS version number on the machine. 

Thanks,

Meenakshi

[Tobias5FAE]

Hi Meenkashi Negi, you kidding us right now, aren't u? 😄
I myself had the screen recording in 2020 or so, when the problem first occured. You can just read this thread, and will find exactly on which Windows machines this issue happens, the workaround and why the workaround isn't a secure option.
Cheers
Tobi