I'm frequently given PDFs with images where the images are not (or not properly) rendered on macOS (or iOS), but which others say that they can read on other OSs. These files are always readable in Acrobat, but the Images do not show in any other app or browser (neither Preview nor Skim or PDF Expert).
From asking around it's clear that I'm not the only person with this issue.
What's going on here and how can I, or the creators of the PDFs, fix it?
Best Answer
iOS
Using the example PDF in the comment below I was able to confirm that some images do not display correctly on my iPad:
Compare the "sidebar" images on page 12-14 for some that are either missing entirely or display incorrectly.
Compare this:
To this:
However, they were able to be viewed using PDF Viewer Pro by PSPDFKit
(Note: I tested using the free version of the app. There are additional features available as an in-app purchase but they are not needed to view these images.)
Unfortunately I was not able to get PDF Viewer Pro to export the PDF into a more 'universal' PDF.
Mac
When I opened the same PDF in Preview on my Mac (running High Sierra), it appeared to show the images just fine, even the ones that did not appear correctly in iOS, so I'm not sure why you're having issues viewing it on macOS, unless you are using an earlier version?