Create PDF Thumbnail C# in WinForms

Question

I am looking for a simple free component where I can generate a given pdf file Thumbnail.

I have looked into PDFBox , GhostScript and Abobe Interop . GhostScript is too heavy to deploy (too many files) and Abobe Interop requires Acrobat Pro 7 or later installed otherwise COM exception and PDFBox rendering functions still not implemented. Is there a free simple component for Win-forms ?

i looked at http://tallcomponents.net/ PDF Thumbnailing component as well, apprently its only for Web

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Take a look at PDFLibNet . It is a single DLL that you can use to view PDFs. You can use it to generate preview images for each page like this:

Image RenderPage(PDFLibNet.PDFWrapper doc, int page)
{
    doc.CurrentPage = page + 1;
    doc.CurrentX = 0;
    doc.CurrentY = 0;

    using (var box = new PictureBox())
    {
        // have to give the document a handle to render into
        doc.RenderPage(box.Handle);

        // create an image to draw the page into
        var buffer = new Bitmap(doc.PageWidth, doc.PageHeight);
        doc.ClientBounds = new Rectangle(0, 0, doc.PageWidth, doc.PageHeight);
        using (var g = Graphics.FromImage(buffer))
        {
            var hdc = g.GetHdc();
            try
            {
                doc.DrawPageHDC(hdc);
            }
            finally
            {
                g.ReleaseHdc();
            }
        }

        return buffer;
    }
}

Answer 2

We were looking for a similar solution - create an image "thumbnail" from a pdf. In our search we looked at all the ones above but they all had their own issues and complications.

We stumbled onto abcPDF (http://www.websupergoo.com/). This product has it all and it was simple and easy to use. Here is a deep link to their documentation about creating a PNG from a PDF. http://www.websupergoo.com/helppdf8net/source/4-examples/19-rendering.htm

Answer 3

I have created project on SourceForge.net. I have used Windows API so you don't need any Adobe Pro:

PDF Thumbnail Generator .