Acrobat XIPro Blurry with retina Display MBP

[holyShip]

I have the new 15" MBP with retina display and my PDF documents, when opened in Acrobat XIPro, look extremely blurry even when the majority of the file is vector based graphics. In fact, the entire Acrobat interface is extremely blurry. The file looks crisp and clear when displayed using Apple's Display Software. Is there a fix? Is Adobe behind on an update to this problem? I've already messed around with the preferences to no avail. Thanks for your help...

[dave_m_k]

Our engineering team is working on making Acrobat Retina/HDPI compatible.  There is no 'fix' available at this time, but I can confirm we're working on it!

[jozeppy]

Any idea/estimate when this will be available?  I'd imagine relatively soon since it's been over 7 months.  Also, everything in my Acrobat XI Pro looks retina and crystal clear (the icons, the "About Acrobat" popup, all UI elements) except the text in a PDF file.  Even the text in all menus and the "Preferences" window is retina and looks beautiful.  Not sure why barberhaus78 has blurry UI elements.

http://forums.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=399771&d=1362015180

[g_miles]

I agree. It has been over one half a year now and no fix yet in site.  Even Microsoft assembled their teams and were able to fix Office 2010 in relatively short order.  Adobe Acrobat XI HiDPI compatibility should be a top priority for any future Adobe update.  Acrobat is virtually unuseable in the current state; not only is the PDF file text blurred, the program is embarrassingly sluggish and lacks refined scrolling response and scrolling speed.  

SKIM is HiDPI compliant and runs well - just as good as Mac Preview. 

[g_miles]

David,

The issue with Acrobat Pro X1 and Mac HIDPI and overall responsiveness persists.  When is this going to be corrected?

[jozeppy]

STILL not fixed.

[Luc_Leroy]

Hi,

The experience described above mentionning crystal clear UI but some blurry text in the PDF is consistent:

With Acrobat and Reader 11.0.1 we have improved the user interface so that it supports retina display. If the UI looks sluggish, it means you have 11 or an earlier version then please upgrade to 11.0.1. It should fix it.

However the rendering of the PDF itself is more of a long run and will be available with a future release (likely 11.0.4).

That being said I'd appreciate your help regarding the different issues you seem to experience:

Placing Reader and another Retina ready application (let's pick Preview) side by side, it doesn't jump to my eyes that the rendering is 'sluggish'. There is a significant difference indeed, but if settings are correct the pixel size in Acrobat/Reader should be the same than it is on a non-retina display which is acceptable - that's how Mac OS supports non retina applications and it works pretty well for most people.

If it looks worst than that, it's very likely that some settings for display/resolution in Mac OS have been changed to use larger fonts, then the pixel ratio (which is 2 by default for a non retina app rendering on a retina display) can be pushed to 3, 4 or even more, and it then looks really bad.

Can you share your display settings?

I have a picture of head anatomy that looks pretty sharp and renders beautifully fast, and a 28MB 3D PDF of a head anatomy that barely displays at 3 frames per second. The 3D looks very sharp on my retina display. What kind of PDF is the head anatomy you refer to? Can you share your file with me? Maybe I'm missing something and any help would be useful!

G. Miles seems to mention some performance issues? 11.0.1 runs smoothly on my two Mac laptops - one is a 4 year old Mac Book Pro, the other one is a 15' Retina. I'd be curious to know what files you are viewing, in which resolution, and anything that can be of value for us to investigate and improve your experience. Can you share a file with us?

Finally, as for the delay responding to Retina support (and I apologize for taking several weeks to answer this thread) it's a different story to perfectly render PDF including all the entities and rendering modes it supports. In order to ship Acrobat or Reader with an official support for Retina display, this includes everything PDF supports, unlike other applications mentionned above which usually support PDF 1.4 best case (the current standard is 1.7). This includes multimedia, 3D, forms, etc.

Thanks,

Luc

[jozeppy]

I'm not experiencing a change in rendering speed compared to my previous MacBook Pro.

My Display settings screenshot: http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y285/Jozeppy26/ScreenShot2013-04-08at24608AM.png

Below are several "Acrobat XI Pro vs. Preview.app" examples from a PDF of Grant's Atlas of Anatomy, 13th Ed.

http://forums.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=406801&d=1365405765

http://forums.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=406802&d=1365405781

http://forums.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=406803&d=1365405813

http://forums.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=406804&d=1365405867

The problem is, it doesn't have to be an anatomy PDF for Retina support to be important (see my earlier post and original screenshot).  Try reading any PDF file in Acrobat on a Retina MacBook Pro right now and very shortly you'll get a headache.  Now image reading a 1300 page PDF textbook.  Basically, without Retina support Acrobat is no longer my "go to" PDF viewing software.  It's literally the worst viewing option on the market right now for the Retina MacBook Pro (at least for my purposes).  I respect the complexities involved in bringing Retina support to all rendering models, but I still can't help but feel sort of shocked that it is taking Adobe nearly 1 year to add this support.

In any case, thank you for your response and update on the development progress.  It was much appreciated.

[holyShip]

Well explained Jozeppy. That's exactly the problem. I'm a designer and I export pdf files for clients all the time for viewing, and I can't see the actual quality of the final product because of the poor rendering. It's of high inportance that I can see how it's going to look when printed. It's just hard to believe and so disappointing that adobe is not ahead on this problem. The problem is not about lack of performance/rendering speed or sluggish response, it's about the non crisp output of vector based graphics.

[holyShip]

Attached is the rendering difference between Apple Display and Acrobat. It's a considerable difference. I also wonder how Adobe® illustrator could be compatibale with retina display and not Acrobat.

[Bill12]

If the Apple is like the PC, there is a Display preference for smoothing. If you have that option, try changing it and see if the result is improved.

[holyShip]

It's definately not a display preference issue. Adobe just hasn't made their software compatable with the retina display. I have the same problem with InDesign. It's strange to me though how Illustrator and Photoshop don't have this issue. What's the problem here?

[Luc_Leroy]

I confirm that it's not a preference issue, even if there is some settings in the OS to set in order to make the application Retina compatible.

Acrobat and Reader simply don't support Retina display rendering at this time, but we are working on this actively.

To draft an answer to your last question, some applications become Retina compatible for almost free, while others need a lot of work. Typically, an app that draws each object directly to the screen supports Retina easily, while application that are optimized for drawing a page at a time quickly require much more work.

Photoshop is an example of an app that manipulates objects at the pixel level thus draws directly on the screen using GPU. Change of definition is basically managed by the OS. This doesn't mean that the Photoshop team didn't have to do anything to get Retina display supported, but it was certainly more straight forward.

Acrobat on the other hand has been designed to generate a bunch of page views very quickly and flush them one by one on the screen. That's why it can display huge files that contains millions of entities with good performance. The pre-rendering of pages has to be changed so it is done at a different definition in order to support Retina display, which requires much more work - performance doesn't come for free.

Best,

Luc

[jozeppy]

I thank you for the update.  In the mean time, I'm just using Apple's Preview.app for simple PDF viewing.  As a side note, however, it renders 1GB 2,000 page internal medicine textbooks very quickly.  Scrolling is fluid, no hiccups.  Obviously the feature set pales in comparison overall, but it works very well when I don't have to create a form or edit a PDF.  It even supports minor annotations and bookmarks.  It looks great with the 2-page display in fullscreen mode (another feature I wish Adobe would support).  Just in case anyone runs into this thread frustrated, annoyed, etc. like I was.  Just give the Preview.app a shot for your minor tasks until Acrobat is updated to be able to display documents legibly again (hopefully before Apple releases the 3rd version of the retina MacBook Pro or the entire Apple line-up has retina displays).

[jaytahoe]

this has been three months and no update yet...i hope progress has been made as we speak...

another option to view PDF on a retina display macbook pro is to use chrome or firefox, not safari though.

[jozeppy]

If you enable the webkit PDF previewer in preferences rather than use Adobe's plugin, the PDF's look beautiful in safari. 

[jozeppy]

Still no update.  Getting laughably ridiculous now IMO.  This will def be my last Adobe purchase

[g_miles]

I agree.  Lack of HiDPi is totally unacceptable at this point in time.

[Luc_Leroy]

Hi,

If you want another update I can repeat that it will be available with the next dot release, which is September - please see my post on May 30.

As whether this is laughably ridiculous or not, I find it interesting that you didn't get that it was for September... IMO.

Regards,

Luc

[keepaustinweird]

Hi Luc:

I've noticed similar fuzzy rendering in Acrobat XI Pro in Windows 8 on a high DPI display.  Will the forthcoming changes you mention apply to high DPI displays across platforms, or will they be specific to the Retina display?

[Luc_Leroy]

Hi keepaustinweird,

There is a similar issue with hi-dpi on Windows as well, as you've noticed.

This will also be addressed with the September update as Acrobat and Reader XI will be hi-dpi aware on Windows.

Best,

Luc

[Luc_Leroy]

Hi Jozeppy,

Thanks for the feedback. now I completely get it.

As I mentioned we are actively working on Retina display for rendering the document, which is not supported yet. I will let you guys know as soon as we have something to share.

Best,

Luc

[g_miles]

I hope soon. It has been too long!

[Guest]

I am not seeing any retina support, including in the UI. What is version 11.0.1 and how do I find it? The newest version I can find is 11.0.03, and Acrobat reports that it is up-to-date.

[C_F_McBlob]

The September update for Acrobat AND Reader will have a fix for Retina displays. I was told this by an Adobe Staffer