Generate PDF thumbnails in .NET without full Acrobat installed

Question

I've seen various methods for generating thumbnails of PDF files in .NET, but unfortunately all of them require full version of Acrobat installed. Is there a way for getting them with free Adobe Reader or any other way?

Answer 1

The only way I know is to load .pdf into readers' hidden ActiveX and then make screenshoots of reader's control. It look weird (and it is weird) -- but it works.

P.S. Or use third-part components.

Answer 2

You need a PDF to TIFF or JPEG or BMP conversion. Using a commercial library allow you to many other things with your PDF's.

You could try either of these commercial approaches

http://www.informatik.com/tiff2pdf.html or http://www.quickpdflibrary.com/ or
http://www.expert-tools.com/ENGLISH/index.html or http://www.amyuni.com/en/developer/pdfcreator/features.html

Answer 3

I find Ghostscript to be just great, and it's free! For Windows, it comes as just a simple .dll and .exe, which you can programmatically launch from C#.