The PDF thumbnail generator to generate a thumbnail from the first page of the PDF

Question

I would like to convert the first page of PDF into thumbnail. How it is done in DSpace customization .

Answer 1

You can use ImageMagick Media Filter to generate thumbnails for your pdfs. The ImageMagick Media Filter was first available in DSpace 5.0.

The ImageMagick Media Filters provide consistent, high quality thumbnails for image bitstreams and PDF bitstreams.

Another option is to use XPDF Filter (if you are not yet on DSpace 5.0) but based on my experience, I find it complicated to install and run.

XPDF Filter

This is an alternative suite of MediaFilter plugins that offers faster and more reliable text extraction from PDF Bitstreams, as well as thumbnail image generation. It replaces the built-in default PDF MediaFilter.

If this filter is so much better, why isn't it the default? The answer is that it relies on external executable programs which must be obtained and installed for your server platform. This would add too much complexity to the installation process, so it left out as an optional "extra" step.

Answer 2

If you are looking for .net api for making thumbnail then you can use Ghost script

GhostscriptWrapper.GeneratePageThumb(filepath, thumbnailPath, 1, 20, 20);