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Assets not showing preview in AEM DAM

Last update: Mon Sep 22 2025 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

Assets uploaded to Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Managed Services do not display previews or thumbnails in the Prod/Dev/Stage environment. To fix this, review and update DAM workflow configurations, replace the PDF preview handler, and validate asset processing after restarting the AEM instance.

Description description

Environment

  • Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Managed Services
  • AEM 6.5
  • All environments

Issue/Symptoms

  • Uploaded assets do not display previews or thumbnails.

  • Recently uploaded images are not visible in the side panel when editing pages.

  • The issue affects all new folders and files created within any site on the affected environment.

  • Observed behavior includes:

    • dam:assetState property of assets remains unprocessed.
    • Manual retries of asset processing workflows fail to resolve the issue.
    • Infinite or stuck workflow jobs were observed, specifically hanging at the CreatePdfPreviewProcess step.

Resolution resolution

To fix the issue with missing asset previews in AEM, follow these steps:

  1. Check if you’ve configured two parallel DAM workflows (for example, DAM Update Asset and a custom workflow). DAM Update Asset is an out-of-the-box (OOTB) workflow. A custom DAM Update asset is an extension of the DAM Update Asset Workflow (with some additional steps as per your needs).   Ideally you should have one OOTB workflow.  If both workflows serve the same purpose, disable one to avoid conflicts. If you choose to keep both, ensure each one is correctly scoped to its asset path and set to transient = true to optimize performance.  For steps, refer to Creating a Transient Workflow in AEM 6.5 User Guide.
  2. In the AEM Workflow console, open each workflow model. Locate the CreatePdfPreviewProcess step and replace it with the AEM PDF Rasterizer process which performs better with complex or graphics-heavy PDFs.  For steps, refer to Use PDF rasterizer to generate renditions in the AEM 6.5 LTS User Guide.
  3. Configure thumbnail and rendition sizes to match your expected output (for example, 1280x1280, 319x319). Save your changes to apply the new settings. For steps, refer to Use PDF rasterizer to generate renditions in the AEM 6.5 LTS User Guide.
  4. Restart the AEM server to clear any stuck workflow jobs or threads. This resets the workflow queue and ensures your configuration changes take effect. Refer to Stopping Adobe Experience Manager in the AEM 6.5 User Guide.
  5. Upload a sample asset (such as a PDF) and confirm that previews and renditions are generated correctly. Confirm that new assets appear in search results and the side panel during page editing. Refer to Upload Assets in the AEM as a Cloud Service User Guide.
  6. Once validated, replicate the workflow and configuration changes in your Stage and Production environments to ensure consistency. For steps, refer to Deploying and Maintaining in the AEM 6.5 User Guide.
  7. Review AEM logs for any warnings or errors related to asset processing. Focus on error.log and workflow.log. This helps you catch any lingering issues early. Refer to Working with Logs in the AEM 6.5 User Guide.
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