Everything Becomes Thinner When Saved as PDF

[Thomas22842972ml5u]

Hello!

Please help with this extremely frustrating problem: 

The lines and text and everything else in my Illustrator project are made thinner when I save it as a PDF. It appears fine in the program but is then thinner when viewing the PDF outside of the program.

This mainly affects portions of the project which I had exported as a PDF from another program and then placed into the project. For instance, if I export a PDF from Word and then place it into a new project in Illustrator, when I save the Illustrator file as a PDF, the lines are noticeably thinner than they in the original Word PDF. 

I am really hoping this can be fixed by simply changing some setting. Please let me know!

Thanks!

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse · Accepted solution]

It's probably just a viewing thing. If you zoom in, does this difference disappear?

Does it happen if you view this PDF in another viewer other than Acrobat? (e.g. a browser or Preview (if you are on a Mac)

For instance, Acrobat has a setting in Preferences > Page Display for things like enhancing thin lines, etc. Some of these, on or off, may affect how smaller lines and text appear.

[Thomas22842972ml5u]

Hi Brad,

Thanks for your response.

I had been viewing the finished PDFs in the Mac Preview app, where they appear thinner. However, when I open them in Acrobat, they appear normal again. Do you know what might be happening here?

I should add that I have been placing PDFs into Illustrator and then flattening the transparency, so that I can edit them. When I don't do this, I notice that this effect doesn't occur. Therefore, it seems that it may have something to do with the settings I choose there? But how does this explain the fact that the finished PDFs then look fine in Acrobat?

Thanks for your help!

[Larry G. Schneider · Accepted solution]

Preview only uses a subset of the PDF specs to display a page. It does not have the capability of an actual PDF processor.