title: C# get thumbnail from file via windows api
body: <p>Windows explorer has the ability to show thumbnails of files. These thumbnails are provided by core and third-party shell extensions.</p>
  
  <p>I know how to extend the shell to provide thumbnails to Windows.</p>
  
  <p>What I want to do is retrieve the thumbnail image from any file on the system via the shell using C#. Is this possible?</p>
  
  <p>Essentially, I'm writing a custom file browser and I want to show thumbnails, and can't possibly parse every file on the planet to make my own thumbnails.</p>
  
  <p>Clarification:
  Many answers seem to be centered around web page thumbnails, or scaling an image. But that's not at all what I'm looking for. What I want is to ask Windows for the thumbnail representation of these file types: .DOC, .PDF, .3DM, .DWG... and mabye about a dozen more. I don't want to parse, render, and make thumbnails myself, because Windows already knows how.</p>
  
  <p>The code I posted as an answer actually works... maybe it can be simplified and cleaned up a bit.</p>