<p>I have a cross-platform (Python) application which needs to generate a JPEG preview of the first page of a PDF.</p>

<p>On the Mac I am spawning <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20090309234215/http://developer.apple.com:80/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/sips.1.html" rel="noreferrer">sips</a>.  Is there something similarly simple I can do on Windows?</p>

You can use ImageMagick's convert utility for this, see some examples in
http://studio.imagemagick.org/pipermail/magick-users/2002-May/002636.html
:
```
```
Convert taxes.pdf taxes.jpg
```
```
Will convert a two page PDF file into [2] jpeg files: taxes.jpg.0,
  taxes.jpg.1
I can also convert these JPEGS to a thumbnail as follows:
```
```
convert -size 120x120 taxes.jpg.0 -geometry 120x120 +profile '*' thumbnail.jpg
```
```
I can even convert the PDF directly to a jpeg thumbnail as follows:
```
```
convert -size 120x120 taxes.pdf -geometry 120x120 +profile '*' thumbnail.jpg
```
```
This will result in a thumbnail.jpg.0 and thumbnail.jpg.1 for the two
  pages.