Change background and text color in PDF readers

In this post, I will describe how to change the default page background and text color in some popular PDF viewers. I will be replacing the default black on white theme with colors similar to the Solarized-Light theme.

Adobe Reader XI

Edit ➾ Preferences ➾ Accessibility ➾ Custom Color and select the colors you want.
For Solarized-Light set page background to RGB(253,246,227) and set Document text to RGB(50,66,78). As far as I know, it is not possible to change the grey window color of Adobe Reader.

Foxit PDF Reader

File ➾ Preferences ➾ Accessibility ➾ Replace document colors ➾ Custom Color

Like Adobe Reader it is not possible to change window color in Foxit PDF reader in normal mode; however, you can do so in full-screen mode.
File ➾ Preferences ➾ Full-Screen ➾ Full-Screen Appearance

Set the background color to be the same as your chosen page background, this way you get the same background color for the whole screen.

Sumatra PDF

• • Settings ➾ Advanced options
  • This would open up a text file. In the FixedPageUI section, you need to change TextColor and BackgroundColor to the hex value of the colors you want.
  • For Solarized-Light use:
    TextColor = #32424E
    BackgroundColor = #fdf6e3
  • In order to change window background you need to add a new property GradientColors to the FixedPageUI section. This works in both normal and fullscreen modes.
    GradientColors = #fdf6e3 #fdf6e3 #fdf6e3