Color issues in Mountain Lion with Acrobat Pro

Question

I'm not sure I'm in the right forum, but here it goes.
Since upgrading my OS to Mountain Lion, I've noticed  when viewing PDFs output from InDesign 5.5 that once in Acrobat Pro the colors look muted and inaccurate.  I never saw this in Snow Leopard, hence my posting.  Color in InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop CS5.5 seem just fine, it's only when a PDF is viewed in Acrobat that I see this muted color issue. 
What I'm concerned with is are these problems when viewing only, or is the PDF color range itself screwed up?  I do prepress work and am using an Eizo CG241 display, CS5.5 and Acrobat Pro 10.1.4.
Thanks!

Answer 1

If you are using a calibrated display, the calibration software should set your Displays>Color profile for you. Mine is set to "PA271W 0610738UA 2012-11-14 14-57", which is the name of the profile created by the calibration software. This is where color temperature, gamma, and color corrections are stored (in my case for prepress work at 5000K and 1.8 gamma).
Sorry about this long-winded posting, but I think the last few paragraphs may help make some progress, and I must first digress to get to them...
Control of color profiles embedded in my PDF files is done in Adobe Creative Suite (verson 6 at this time). I use Bridge to synchronize the suite. North American Web/Internet is for files going to the web and I apply sRGB to those files when opening them (if they aren't already sRGB). North American Prepress 2 is for files going to a printing press, and I apply Adobe RGB to files when opening them (if they aren't already Adobe RGB).
Files for the web are saved using Photoshop's "Save for Web..." command, which is set to sRGB and uses the Document Profile for a preview.
Files for print are converted to CMYK and placed in InDesign or Illustrator, where they are saved as PDF/X-1a files, which are CMYK and those values are preserved (not color managed). I should note that before that point, during client proofs, the files are placed as Adobe RGB. They are replaced by CMYK images before making a PDF/X-1a file for the printing press. Either way, the files display correctly and identically (except for any color gamut differences) regardless of color mode or application. (This is color management working correctly.) Except for Acrobat and Reader.
Until CS6, all PDF files would be displayed by Acrobat identically to how they appeared in the originating application (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign). Now all PDF files are darker, more drab, and shifted slightly toward blue.
Here's the weird thing. No matter what I do, even if I start with an sRGB file and save it as a Photoshop PDF using the Save for Web command, so it has been sRGB throughout the process, when the PDF file is viewed in Acrobat or Reader it is darker, more drab, and shifted slightly toward blue.
My first hypothesis was that Acrobat and Reader were applying sRGB to everything. But that appears to be wrong. Now I'm thinking that it's my calibrated display profile that is being ignored. And since it is calibrated for 5000K and 1.8 gamma, that is what explains the big shift in darkness, vividness, and color. It may be that the display profile, not the embedded color profile, is all that matters!
If so, a good experiment would be to calibrate one of your displays for 5000K and 1.8 gamma. If Acrobat and Reader are ignoring the display profile, you should see a very obvious difference in displayed PDF files compared to displays using 6500K and 2.2 gamma (which is just about everyone these days, except for publishing professionals who do exacting print work).
Sheesh!