Acrobat Pro DC displays incorrectly but prints and exports fine

[NIRC]

Covers of a book series I created under Acrobat X with InDesign CC have worked fine for our printers and all other uses. However... after shifting to Acrobat Pro DC, the blacks show up as white. When I do a printout, it is fine. When I drag the PDF into Photoshop or export is to some other format, it works fine. Only in Acrobat DC is the display messed up so I cannot see what I am getting.

  I tried regenerating the files with InDesign CC 2018, but that was just a Hail Mary. Nothing changed.

  Everything seems to point to a display bug, or some display setting I messed up in Acrobat.

  I tried Acrobat Support and had a "chat session" for nearly an hour, unable to convince the tech supporter I was assigned that something was wrong, until he tried everything for himself and came up with some techno-babble that was his way of saying he didn't have a clue.

  Anyway, I would be happy to pass one of the offending PDF files along is anyone wants to have a look.

[NIRC]

I just now discovered that the Acrobat Pro DC on my second computer displays everything correctly. Which means... there must be some setting that is out of whack. Any ideas?

[Test Screen Name]

Hmm, one thought, are you involving Acrobat somehow in the PDF creation? You should use only EXPORT from InDesign, NEVER ever print to PDF from InDesign.

[Test Screen Name]

Well, you'll get no help from Adobe, even if they understood this stuff, since support for Acrobat X finished years ago, and their recommendation will be to use Acrobat DC... but maybe we can help.

You say "blacks turned to white". Do you mean that it reversed the page (so also whites turned to black). Or do you mean that a graphic, which should be black, disappeared leaving only a white box? Or something else?

[NIRC]

Thanks for offering to help. I think I need to clean up my question:

     (1) I AM using Acrobat Pro DC (not Acrobat X), which was why I tried to see if the same thing happened up DC. It did.

     (2) I use Acrobat presents (joboptions) for everything, and have done so for over 10 years.

     (3)  When I take the problem file and open it on the Acrobat Pro DC on my second computer at home, it displays just as it should.

     My conclusion: Some setting or other affecting how Acrobat displays PDFs is causing the problem, but I don't know which one. Alas, I cannot make a screen dump here at home, but as soon as I return to the office tomorrow morning, I will do so and post it here, together with a screen dump of how is ​should​ look.

[Test Screen Name]

(2) so are you using Export, or using Print to PDF? Both have presets, so I can't tell from your reply.

[NIRC]

I use "Adobe PDF presets", which means I do NOT export to PDF or print with PDF. Anyway, this would not affect how it shows up in Acrobat on one computer fine and on the other messed up.

[Test Screen Name]

I don't understand. In InDesign you export to PDF or you print to PDF. These are your only two choices.

[NIRC]

Actually, there are 3 (but the last one is a variation of "export." There is a menu called "Adobe PDF presets" that uses it.

[Karl Heinz Kremer · Accepted solution]

Just to summarize: You can correctly display the file in Acrobat X on your work computer and in Acrobat DC on your home computer. But it does not work in Acrobat DC on your work computer. Is that correct so far? If so, open up Acrobat's preferences, then go to the "Accessibility" category, and make sure that "Replace colors" is turned off. If this is turned on, you could potentially get what you are seeing.

[NIRC]

Brilliant! That was it.

   I hope there is some way to alert the tech supporters on the "Chat" service about this. I was run around in circles because the person didn't know this, and refused to pass me on to someone else for help.

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

Next time come right to the forums, there are times when you need the official support, but for “normal” issues, chances are you’ll get better help here.