A simple script to generate thumbnail previews of PDFs. Requires ImageMagick and Ghostscript

PDF_Thumbnails.py

import subprocess
import shlex, os, glob

#ensure ImageMagick and Ghostscript are installed
#tested on Python 2.7 / Windows XP

#this folder contains the convert.exe 
image_magick_path = "C:\\Program Files\\ImageMagick-6.6.7-Q16\\"
os.chdir(image_magick_path)

#the folder containing the PDFs
pdf_files_path = "D:\\Temp\\pdfs\\"
pdf_files = glob.glob('%s*.pdf' % pdf_files_path)

#the folder to store the generated images
output_path = "D:\\Temp\\thumbnails\\"


#use the startupinfo to hide the Windows Shell
startupinfo = subprocess.STARTUPINFO()
startupinfo.dwFlags |= subprocess._subprocess.STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW #subprocess.STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW
    
for pdf in pdf_files:
    filename = os.path.basename(pdf)
    #create a new output filename
    output_file = output_path + os.path.splitext(filename)[0] + ".png"

    #this is the windows shell command
    command_line = """convert.exe -quality {quality} -border 3x3
    -bordercolor #000000 "{filename}"[0] -thumbnail 100x120 "{pngfile}" """.format(quality=100,
                                                              filename = pdf, pngfile = output_file)
    args = shlex.split(command_line)
    #run the command
    proc = subprocess.Popen(args, stderr=subprocess.PIPE,
                            stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stdin=subprocess.PIPE, startupinfo=startupinfo)