How can I render PDF file pages as images?

Question

I need to be able to convert a PDF file to images (one image per page) to be displayed on a web page like Google Docs does. This is for an internal intranet application where the requirements call for a PDF file on the web but with the ability to track scrolling, and this is the only way I can come up with to do it.

The problem is I can't find a good way to convert PDF files on the fly.

Answer 1

Try GhostScript. It's open source and can by run as a command line process or directly through the DLL. I've used this in a production app for the last 2 years with minimal problems.

To see how to export images using the dll directly, see this codeproject article.

Answer 2

You can use ImageMagik, it's free and can do that kind of conversion.

http://www.imagemagick.org

Answer 3

We use ABCpdf here to convert PDFs to images.

Note: it is NOT free

Answer 4

Try the PDF components from Tall Components to convert to images.

You will need to look into these a bit further to track changes etc and may require converting to text.