title: Converting PDF pages to TIF files
body: <p>I need to convert PDF pages to TIF files from within my app (or using a console app we shell out to...)</p>
  
  <p>I've tried some 3rd party tools/apps, but just to load one of my pages, they can take literally an <em>order of magnitude</em> or more than Acrobat Reader on the complex graphics (blueprints originally created by AutoCAD).  Are these kinds of 3rd party libraries slow because typically they're accessing the .pdf directly rather than through the Acrobat API?)</p>
  
  <p>I think I need to become an Adobe Developer so I can access their API.</p>
  
  <p>Has anyone here gone down this path?  I'm a Delphi developer and would prefer to stay in Delphi, guessing I'd use Adobe's IAC API (COM). However, Adobe's site (<a href="http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/?view=overview" rel="nofollow noreferrer">link</a>) states that IAC can't use the Reader. Unfortunately, I can't ask my users to buy &amp; install the full Acrobat.</p>
  
  <p>But then, the site states:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>You can also extend the functionality
    of the IAC interfaces by writing
    plug-ins that use core API objects not
    already part of the IAC support
    system.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>What's that all about? Is that what I'll need to do? </p>
  
  <p>Any suggestions what my next step would be, which Adobe API,  which Developer program would suit us, how much we should expect to spend to join, whether the API is stable (and, assuming the user has the Reader installed) &amp; dependable on a wide range of Windows machines, how to avoid learning an enormous class library just to make what we hope are three calls:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Open PDF</li>
  <li>Save Page x as TIF</li>
  <li>Close PDF</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>I'm asking the usual general questions that one asks when making this kind of decision. Any suggestions are welcome.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks.</p>