Enable thumbnail generation and asset preview rendering for HEIC file formats in AEM Assets. | Community
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rianna_dsilva
Level 2
February 3, 2026
New

Enable thumbnail generation and asset preview rendering for HEIC file formats in AEM Assets.

  • February 3, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 14 views

Current Limitation

HEIC files can be uploaded and stored in AEM Assets, but:

  • No thumbnails are generated
  • No visual previews are available in the Assets UI
  • Authors must download the file to view it
  • This negatively impacts usability, discoverability, and editorial efficiency.

AEM Assets should:

  • Automatically generate thumbnails for HEIC files
  • Generate standard preview renditions (similar to JPEG/PNG)
  • Display HEIC previews directly in the Assets UI and picker dialogs
  • Work out of the box in AEM as a Cloud Service
  • Leverage existing asset processing pipelines (e.g. Dynamic Media or asset microservices)
  • Respect existing permissions and renditions logic

Business Value

  • Improved author experience: Editors can visually identify assets without downloads
  • Operational efficiency: Faster asset selection and reduced friction in content creation
  • Modern format support: HEIC is increasingly common on iOS devices and in creative workflows
  • Reduced manual conversion: Avoids the need to pre-convert HEIC files outside AEM

Use Case

  • Content teams frequently upload images directly from iPhones and modern cameras using HEIC. Without thumbnails or previews, asset selection becomes error-prone and time-consuming, especially at scale.

Expected Outcome

  • HEIC files behave like other supported image formats in AEM Assets, including:
  • Thumbnail visibility in asset grids
  • Preview rendering in asset details and pickers
  • Consistent authoring experience across image formats

 

    1 reply

    Vishal_Anand
    Vishal_Anand
    Level 4
    February 4, 2026

    ​@rianna_dsilva Yes. This has to be in Adobe’s pipeline to extend the asset features to HEIC format given heavy iOS adoption for asset generation. 

    Though in the meantime, you can always create custom workflow to handle the preview, or other heavy business specific requirements. Below are the options of achieving those:

    Option 1: Add a HEIC processing step to the asset ingestion pipeline that converts HEIC to JPEG for renditions (thumbnail, web preview).

    Option 2: Implement via Asset Compute microservice (or extend existing Dynamic Media pipeline) using libheif + ImageMagick to decode HEIC and output standard renditions.

     

    Note: It may take a while for Adobe to deliver these functionalities so I would recommend to have the custom solution in place to avoid business impact. Hope this helps!

     

    ​@kautuk_sahni 

     

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