Poor display quality when scrolling images in Acrobat Reader 2025

[Flamboyant_help5196]

I'm experiencing some pretty annoying rendering artifacts when scrolling through PDF documents with images. These look as if some horizontal pixel lines are rendered multiple times, replacing other lines. It's especially obvious when the image contains text, which sometimes becomes downright difficult to read.

Here's an example screenshot. You can see the artifact on the top of the line starting with "Bearbeitungsgebühr", and in the lower half of the line starting with "Sofern":

The artifacts change, i.e. they disappear but reappear in other places of the image, when scrolling up and down through the pages of the document. For example, here I scrolled the text section from above out of view and then back into view, and now the artifact shows up in a different location:

I've tried experimenting with page zoom (it happens at all levels including 100%), rendering settings (hardware and software) and page display options (page cache, picture smoothing, text smoothing, etc.). None of the changes made a difference, the rendering issues always happen.

What I did notice though is that if I change anything about any of these settings, i.e. change page zoom level or toggle the image smoothing option, any artifacts that were visible disappear as the page is re-rendered. However, as soon as I start scrolling again, more artifacts will appear.

System: Windows 10 Pro 10.0.19045

Version: 2025.001.20577 64-bit

Video card: GeForce RTX 3080

Video driver: 576.80

This isn't a new issue, I'm quite sure I've seen this happen for years, which is why I tended to use other PDF readers, all of which have much higher rendering quality. But I've recently been using Acrobat Reader a bit more again, and now it bothers me that the bug is still there...

[Amal.]

Hi there,

I hope you are doing well. Thanks for reaching out to the community. I'm really sorry to hear about the persistent rendering issues ,  we understand how frustrating that can be, especially when it impacts readability.

From what you've described (and the screenshots you've shared), it does sound like a known rendering artifact issue related to GPU acceleration in Acrobat. These types of glitches can occur, particularly with high-resolution images or text-heavy images, during scrolling and partial re-renders.

Here are a few things you can try:

• Open Adobe Acrobat Reader.
• Go to Edit > Preferences.
• Under Page Display, look for the Rendering section.
• Uncheck the option: 'Use page cache'

Sometimes, display issues happen more often in continuous scroll mode. To fix this, try switching to:

View > Page Display > Single Page View

This setting shows one full page at a time and helps avoid glitches that happen while scrolling.

Let us know how it goes. 

~Amal

[Flamboyant_help5196]

Hi Amal

Thank you very much for your suggestions.

I had actually already disabled Page Cache since it causes my Acrobat Reader to generate high CPU load even when idle. So this option isn't the cause.

I assumed I had already disabled GPU acceleration. In Preferences, Multimedia and 3D, under Preferred Renderer I have switched from DirectX 9 to Software and restarted Acrobat Reader, but the artifacts still show up just the same. By my understanding, that means the artifacts wouldn't be related to GPU acceleration, right?

I can confirm that the artifacts seem to only appear in continuous scroll mode. This is a fine workaround for some documents, like the one I'm currently reading. I'm afraid that it might be more difficult depending on the page size of other documents, though, to find a good compromise between single page display and a legible zoom level.

[Amal.]

Hi there,

Thank you for the update and for trying those steps.

You're right — if you've already changed the Preferred Renderer to Software and restarted Acrobat Reader, then the issue is likely not related to GPU acceleration.

It's also helpful to know that the problem only happens in continuous scroll mode. That mode can sometimes cause small glitches when showing images or text, especially in complex PDFs. Switching to single page view is a good workaround, but we understand it may not work well for all documents — especially if the page size is large or the zoom level makes it hard to read.

Here are a few more things you can try:

• Go to Preferences > Page Display, and try turning Smooth Text on or off.

• Open the same PDF in your web browser to see if the issue still happens.

• If this keeps happening with other PDFs too, you can try Help > Repair Installation and reset Acrobat preferences as described here https://adobe.ly/44ZNF6O .

Let us know how it goes.

~Amal