Processing profiles

Transcript

Processing profiles define what work is to be performed on assets, when they’re uploaded into AEM or reprocessed. Processing profiles are effectively the configuration UI for AEM’s asset microservices, which perform all the actual work. AEM uses internal processing profiles to generate thumbnails and web renditions. But you can define your own to create any rendition you choose. Before we get started, it’s important to understand how processing profiles are applied at the folder level, and that only a single processing profile can be applied to a given folder. Let’s jump over to the whiteboard to help understand the applications. Let’s say we have two logical sets of renditions, two mobile renditions, vertical and horizontal, and two social renditions, one for Twitter and the other for Instagram. The initial inclination might be to create two different processing profiles, one for mobile and one for social. But let’s see how that can play out in more complex DAMs. The pressing profiles must be defined in such a way that a single profile can provide all the renditions required by a folder. For example, our Magazine folder needs mobile renditions, and the Adventures folder needs both mobile renditions and social renditions. Because asset folders can only have one processing profile applied, we must choose between either the mobile, or social processing profiles, as it can’t have both. A more encompassing processing profile that includes renditions for both mobile and social renditions could be used for the Adventures folder. This of course, would result in duplication of the mobile rendition definitions between the mobile profile and this larger mobile and social profile. And anytime a mobile rendition is added, updated, or deleted, the changes would have to be made in both processing profiles. Because of this, it’s typically better to create the minimum number of processing profiles and set them as high up the folder hierarchy tree as possible. This way, all assets will get all the same renditions, and the governance of their renditions is simpler because they’re defined in fewer places, ideally, a single processing profile. The downside is you may end up with unused renditions. However, since AEM offloads this work to its asset microservices, there’s virtually no performance impact to do this. But it also needs to be balanced against your AEM as a Cloud Service storage quotas. Okay, let’s jump back to AEM, and see how we can create a processing profile. Pressing profiles are managed by AEM Asset Administrator’s add tools, Assets, Processing Profiles.

Any existing processing profiles are listed here, or you can create new ones by tapping Create.

Let’s create the consolidated processing profile discussed on the whiteboard, that generates renditions of image assets that are optimized for mobile devices and social channels. First, give it a meaningful name. Let’s name ours weekend as we use it to generate all the renditions required by the weekend brand.

FPO renditions are handy to have when using Adobe asset link. Let’s enable this and leave the quality low, so the file sizes of these renditions are small. Tap Add New to define the new rendition to generate, give the rendition a name, this will be the name of the rendition that’s displayed to AEM users, and will also appear in the file name of the rendition if downloaded from AEM.

Let’s make our first rendition for the vertical orientation of the mobile device. We can select the format of the rendition, provide the dimensions, and since we selected JPEG, a lossy compression, we can specify the quality. Let’s drop it to 80 to help decrease the file size. We can scope the application of the processing profile by MIME type. Let’s apply this to all image assets using the image slash star MIME type selector, but exclude Photoshop files, so we’ll select the two Photoshop MIME types. Let’s add another for mobile horizontal.

We’ll make it the same as vertical for consistency with the height and width flipped. Using the same approach, I’ll quickly make two renditions, one for Twitter and one for Instagram. Note that the width and height are the max allowed dimension values, and do not define cropping rules. The rendition will simply be the original image resized proportionally such that it fits within the width and height defined by the rendition definition. You can always remove renditions by tapping the Delete icon next to them. Let’s save our changes. Back in the Processing Profile console, we can see a row for the newly created profile along with a summary of the renditions it will generate. Selecting a profile, brings up the usual actions of Edit, Copy, and Delete. And also the ability to apply the profile to a folder or remove it.

Let’s apply the new pricing profile high up the folder tree, so all our weekend assets have all the renditions we specified here. We can always review and remove as needed, where a profile is applied by selecting and tapping Remove Profile from Folder, as this list all the folders is applied to. But let’s cancel out of this for now.

Let’s head over to Assets, Files and see how the applied pressing profile works. So first, notice the weekend sites folder lists the applied pressing profile denoted with the gear icon. Opening the folder Properties, and going to Asset Processing, we can not only see the applied processing profile, but we could also change it or remove it.

Clicking into the asset that resides somewhere beneath the folder with the processing profile applied to it, we can review the existing renditions. As we can see, it only has the default web and thumbnails. This is because while we applied the processing profile to the parent folder, we never reprocessed the assets. So to reprocess the assets, we can simply select the assets or folder and tap Reprocess. The drop down contains a list of processing profiles to apply when reprocessing. Full process simply means use the default AEM provided processing profile that generates the thumbnail and web renditions, and beneath that, any custom processing profiles are listed, regardless of what profile is applied to the parent folder. This is another reason why consolidating pressing profiles into larger, easier to understand sets is advantageous as it removes the need for AEM users to understand the nuances of each processing profile, or if they need to apply more than one to generate the desired renditions. Lastly, run post process indicates if after the selected processing profile is applied if the auto start workflow optionally set on the parent folder should be invoked, and if dynamic media is enabled, if the asset should be reset to dynamic media for post processing. After the processing is finished, we can see they all have the new renditions along with the renditions they had before. Reprocessing assets will not remove existing renditions. Rather, it will only create new, or replace existing renditions. Note that name of the renditions here match the rendition name defined in the processing profile, which is why it’s important to give them a clear and semantic name.

So we just saw how existing assets can have processing profiles generate new renditions. Let’s see what happens when new assets are uploaded. Let’s upload a handful of images for a new adventure.

Wait for them to process.

Click into one. And there we go, these new assets automatically have all of the new renditions for mobile and social automatically generated, along with the AEM provided web and thumbnail renditions. -