[Question] PDF thumbnail in XP

[XP_2600]

Guys, i noticed that Windows Vista have option to view pdf files as thumbnails, is there any known way to get it in Windows XP ?

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--Sonic

[LiquidHonesty]

My XP does show the pdf thumbnails, but the pdf's have to be created with Acrobat 7 I believe it is. Could also be that I have Acrobat Pro since I create .pdf's all the time for work. I haven't paid attention as to if it does it on my laptop which just hast he reader or not.

[hosebeast]

You need to have a PDF shell extension installed which renders the thumbnail for Explorer. Many Adobe products, including the free Reader, automatically install such a shell extension, but the various versions work slightly differently. For example, all versions fail to render the thumbnail if the PDF is password-protected for reading (which is logical) but some versions refuse to render the thumbnail even if the PDF is only password-protected against editing. There are some versions which make an exception for PDF files which have been saved with embedded thumbnails (so they don't have to render on the fly) but this would never be true with older PDFs because embedded thumbnails are only supported by newer revisions of the PDF file format.

Also note that if you have multiple Adobe products installed from different generations (for example: Acrobat 6.0 with Reader 7.0 and Illustrator CS2 with Photoshop CS), conflicts can cause the shell extension to break, which could stop thumbnails from displaying even if the programs otherwise seem to work fine.

[XP_2600]

Well, i got a dll earlier that can make psd files make show as thumbnails, is there any dll that i can resgister to get pdf thumbnail without installing Acrobat professional ?

[hosebeast]

Well, i got a dll earlier that can make psd files make show as thumbnails, is there any dll that i can resgister to get pdf thumbnail without installing Acrobat professional?

You don't need Acrobat Professional; you can use Acrobat Standard or even Acrobat Elements (which costs less than $30).

Installing the free Adobe Reader 7.0 will enable Thumbnail View in Windows Explorer for certain PDF files. They must meet these 2 conditions:

1. The PDF format must be version 1.5 or higher which basically means the file must be saved by Acrobat 6.0 or higher. As far as I know, all current competitors (including every freeware program which can create PDF files today) conform to version 1.4 or earlier of the PDF format.

2. The PDF must have been saved with the "embedded page thumbnails" option. This option is available in Acrobat. There is also a freeware program from CoolPDF which can add embedded page thumbnails but it's pointless to run it on a PDF unless the PDF meets the condition above (version 1.5 or higher).

For PDF files which do not meet these conditions, you need to buy at least Acrobat Elements.

PSD files are fairly easy to render a thumbnail of. That's why you can get a simple DLL to handle it. PDF files require a Postscript rendering engine. Even though Adobe's actual shell extension may look small, it makes calls into other DLLs which add up to many megs of code.

Something to consider: Do you really need thumbnails in Windows Explorer? Or do you really just want to something which can browse PDF files as thumbnails? If the latter, then try XnView. It has a PDF plug-in which handles thumbnails. You need to download and install Ghostscript separately because the XnView plug-in depends upon Ghostscript as its Postscript rendering engine.