PDF thumbnails in Delphi

Question

I was wondering if there was an easy of generating thumbnails of PDF files in Delphi. Basically I want to render the first page of a PDF to a small bitmap (say 100x100 or similar).
I see two options 1 use a PDF component, 2 somehow tap into how explorer generates previews/thumbnails.

Answer 1

Using a library like QuickPDF or Gnostice is really the easiest option. I'm fairly sure that the PDF thumbnails in explorer are actually generated by whatever PDF software is installed such as Adobe. Unless you can guarantee that a proper PDF reader is installed on every workstation the idea of using thumbnails might not be valid.

Edit: Here's a complete application using QuickPDF to render the first page of a given PDF file into a BMP file. At 10 DPI my output BMP file is 85 pixels wide by 110 pixels high.

program PDFToBMP;
{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}
uses
  SysUtils, QuickPDF;
var
  Q : TQuickPDF;
begin
  Q := TQuickPDF.Create;
  try
    Q.LoadFromFile(ParamStr(1), '');
    Q.RenderPageToFile(10 {DPI}, 1 {PageNumber}, 0 {0=BMP}, ChangeFileExt(ParamStr(1),'.bmp'));
  finally
    Q.Free;
  end;
end.