what I needed was a "convert stdpicture to native dotnet image". The
class you provided worked perfectly when i put it into my project. the
thumbnail was returning a vague _com.obejct type, i needed to cast
this into a stdole.stdpicture first.

but i cant see if that's possible in the dotnet AIL? however, I would
be converting stdpicture to AIL image then to dotnet image? is your
included class better since im not performing any AIL functions? i am
just returning the com.object thumbnail, converting to image and then
putting it on a button.

anyway, sorry for all the questions, thanks for your help and i'll get
there in about 100 years i guess! :-)