How to Convert PDF File to Images in C#

Create a Console Application in Visual Studio. We recommend Visual Studio 2019 or later to install and work with these packages.

Click on the Project tab and select Manage NuGet Packages, or click on the Tools tab, select NuGet Package Manager, and select Manage NuGet Packages for Solution.

Select the Browse tab and set the Package Source as nuget.org.

Suppose you do not find nuget.org in the Package Source window; add it by clicking on the Settings tab. Click the + icon and type the name and source shown in the image.

Type PDFium in the search bar. Install PdfiumViewer, PdfiumViewer.Native.x86.v8-xfa, and PDFium.x86.

After you install these packages, a reference to PdfiumViewer will be available in the References window. Create a folder in your project directory named Samples and place the PDF file you want to convert in this folder.

Add a reference to System.Drawing to import this assembly into your project. Right-click on the References tab in the Solution Explorer window, select Add Reference, navigate to Framework, and select System.Drawing.

Add the following code snippet to the Program.cs file. You can customize the input and output file name as per your requirement.

This code snippet will convert single-page and multi-page documents. After executing the code, your PDF file should be converted to images (each PDF file page as an image).

using PdfiumViewer;
using System;
using System.Drawing.Imaging;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;

namespace PdfToImage {
  class Program {
    static void Main(string[] args) {
      var projectDirectory = Directory.GetParent(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory()).Parent.FullName;

      try {
        using (var document = PdfDocument.Load(projectDirectory + @"\Samples\document.pdf")) {
          var pageCount = document.PageCount;

          for (int i = 0; i < pageCount; i++) {
            var dpi = 300;

            using (var image = document.Render(i, dpi, dpi, PdfRenderFlags.CorrectFromDpi)) {
              var encoder =
                  ImageCodecInfo.GetImageEncoders().First(c => c.FormatID == ImageFormat.Jpeg.Guid);
              var encoderParams = new EncoderParameters(1);
              encoderParams.Param[0] =
                  new EncoderParameter(System.Drawing.Imaging.Encoder.Quality, 100L);

              image.Save(projectDirectory + @"\Samples\image_" + i + ".jpg", encoder,
                         encoderParams);
            }
          }
        }
      } catch (Exception ex) {
        Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
      }

      Console.WriteLine("Pdf converted to images. Press any key to exit...");
      Console.ReadKey();
    }
  }
}

If you face the exception Unable to find an entry point named 'FPDF_AddRef' in DLL 'pdfium.dll.', you need to change the target platform in your build setting.

Navigate to the Build tab and select the platform target according to your system, i.e., x86 or x64. If you do not find the platform target under Build, select the Project tab, select project properties, and find the platform target under Build.

Create a Console Application in Visual Studio 2019 or a higher version by following step 1 as discussed above.

Follow steps 2 and 3, described in the above section, to browse the Syncfusion package from NuGet.org.

Search for the Syncfusion.pdfViewer.Windows package and install it.

Add references to System.Drawing and System.Windows.Forms by following step 6 mentioned above.

Copy the following code snippet into your Program.cs file to convert a single page of a PDF file to an image. You can customize it for multipage conversion using the for loop.

Customize the input and output file names as per your requirement. You can select the specific page to convert by passing the appropriate parameter in the ExportAsImage() method.

using Syncfusion.Pdf.Parsing;
using Syncfusion.Windows.Forms.PdfViewer;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Drawing.Imaging;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace PDFToJPEG {
  class Program {
    static void Main(string[] args) {
      // Initialize the PdfViewer Control
      PdfViewerControl pdfViewer = new PdfViewerControl();

      // Load the input PDF file
      PdfLoadedDocument document = new PdfLoadedDocument("../../Data/document.pdf");

      pdfViewer.Load(document);

      Bitmap image = pdfViewer.ExportAsImage(0);

      // Save the image.
      image.Save("output.jpg", ImageFormat.Jpeg);
    }
  }
}

Navigate to the project directory->bin->Debug to find the output image file.