C# import of Adobe Illustrator (.AI) files render to Bitmap?

Question

Anyone knows how to load a .AI file (Adobe Illustrator) and then rasterize/render the vectors into a Bitmap so I could generate eg. a JPG or PNG from it?

I would like t

Answer 1

With the newer AI versions, you should be able to convert from PDF to image. There are plenty of libraries that do this that are cheap, so I would choose buy over build on this one. If you need to convert the older AI files, all bets are off. I am not sure what format they were in.

Answer 2

Well, if Gregory is right that ai files are pdf-compatible, and you are okay with using GPL code, there is a project called GhostscriptSharp on github that is a .NET interface to the Ghostscript engine that can render PDF.