Do you want to create thumbnails for pdf files with PHP (or C#)? You can simply do this with ghostscript. Here’s the php way (it is very easy to convert this code to C#):

1. First install ghostscript on your server. Download: http://ghostscript.com/releases/
2. Then write your code:

$pathToPdf = "C:\....\PdfFile.pdf";
$pathToJpg = "C:\....\generatedThumbnail.jpg";

$gsCall = "\"C:\....\gs\gs8.70\bin\gswin32.exe\" -q -dBATCH -dMaxBitmap=300000000 -dNOPAUSE -dSAFER -sDEVICE=jpeg -dTextAlphaBits=4 -dGraphicsAlphaBits=4 -dFirstPage=1 -dLastPage=1 -sOutputFile={0} {1} -c quit";

$gsCall = str_replace(array('{0}', '{1}'), array($pathToJpg, $pathToPdf), $gsCall); // or use sprintf
$str = exec($gsCall, $output=array(), $returnValue);

This code will generate a jpg file with the content of the first page of the pdf file.

Ready.

Tags: pdf, php