Acrobat leaves a black artifact (looks like black sheets of paper) over pdfs. Artifacts only visible in Illustrator, not Acrobat or Photoshop.

Report · Feb 02, 2016

No idea what's causing black shadow to appear over the top left corner of most of my PDF's. It's not visible in Acrobat or Photoshop, only in Illustrator.

So far, the artifact is in the same place, every time, for every PDF I produce.

Is there place to upload these files, so someone can take a look and tell me what these shadows are, and how to clear them?

Report · Feb 02, 2016

Illustrator isn't a general PDF editor, so it's not unusual to be out of line with Acrobat and Photoshop which should have error free rendering.

Report · Feb 02, 2016

It may not be a general PDF editor for you, but for what I'm doing, I do sometimes need to scale, rotate, move, and/or alter parts of a PDF.

Illustrator is the best way to do that, so I would really like to know what's blocking a big part of my PDF.

Report · Feb 02, 2016

Illustrator's not really the best way to do this if it is adding extra and unwanted elements. However if there is an element you can see in Illustrator maybe you can remove it there.

If you'd like to share a file and a screen shot in Illustrator, someone may have a clue. You have to share it on your own site etc. because you can't share within the forum.

Report · Feb 04, 2016

Sorry, this problem has *not* gone away. Still getting shadows in PDF's created through the Autodesk Inventor "Design Review" free viewer.

I still think that the issue is related to the Design Review app, There is no shadow when I create a PDF from a Word file, for example.

I am posting this in the Illustrator forum, since this 'problem' does not appear in Acrobat or Photoshop and only shows up when I need to edit the pdf in Illustrator.

This is what the shadow looks like, generally, mostly at the top and left, although it doesn't show up in exactly the same place in every pdf.

Stacked files create a shadow in PDF.jpg - Google Drive

Report · Feb 02, 2016

Okay, I figured it out, I think.Stacked files create a shadow in PDF.jpg - Google Drive

I had too many Autodesk Inventor DWF files stacked up. (They were all opened, visible in the lower tray of Windows 7 as multiple instances of the viewer still active.)

Don't know how many is too many but they left a shadow:

Here's what the result looked like --- it's just a screen shot. Problem solved -- won't be leaving so many Inventor (Design Review) windows open.

Stacked files create a shadow in PDF.jpg - Google Drive

Anyway, thanks for your responses and interest. (Probably a complaint that should be forwarded to Microsoft or Autodesk, not Adobe.)