I have noticed that if I have a PDF open, and then open a 2nd PDF, the quality of the 2nd PDF is terrible. Images become choppy, fonts can get squished, fuzzy, and/or overly dark, etc. However, the exact same PDF, if I open it by itself, is picture perfect -- crisp images, fonts, etc.
I have tried this with my own PDFs (generated via MadCap Flare and Word) and other people's PDFs (generated who knows how), and the effect always occurs. Do others see this? Is this some kind of graphics issue on my PC, or a problem with Adobe, or ??
Using Adobe Reader 9.
Sounds like a memory issue. How much RAM does your computer have? How many apps are open? How many extra background processes are running?
I typically have several apps open all day. I closed them all, rebooted the machine, and opened 2 PDFs without starting anything else. Same effect -- PDF #2 looks bad, even though if I open it by itself, it looks great.
I have 4GB RAM.
I have a small handful of background processes running, nothing out of the ordinary I don't think.