Supported file types in Assets Server

Any file type can be stored in Assets Server. However, for commonly used file types, Assets Server creates thumbnails and previews. Additionally the server extracts and embeds metadata within the files. The following table shows the common file types that are supported.

Image files

Standard file types

¹ Not all file types support embedding of all types of metadata fields, for example PNG files have very limited support for metadata embedding and some older EPS files have no support for metadata embedding because they were saved in a Postscript only structure.

² Only supported on Linux and MacOS (processing) server.

³ By default Assets Server will try to extract the embedded thumbnail from the xmp-metadata of the PSB file. Enabling high-quality preview generation of PSB files is done through the following property of the cluster-config.properties.txt file:

#
# Set to true to enable preview generation of PSB
# PSB processing requires a lot of disk space
# have at least 300 gigabyte disk space available on all processing server
#
# When set to false the embedded thumbnail will be extracted instead
#
psbProcessingEnabled=false

Note: Processing (mulitple) PSB files requires a lot of disk space: depending on the file size it may take between 5 to 30 minutes. We advise to have at least 300 GB of disk space available on all Processing Servers.

⁴ Only supported on Linux.

⁵ In Assets Server 6.91 and higher, the preview of Adobe Illustrator files is in PDF format.

⁶ Requires Assets Server 6.101 or higher.

⁷ Support for generating previews for HEIC images from modern devices requires Assets Server 6.119 or higher.

RAW camera files

¹ Support is limited and can sometimes result in black or unavailable previews and/or thumbnails.

² Requires Assets Server 6.55 or higher.

Video files

¹ Only supported on Linux.

Audio files

¹ Requires Assets Server 6.95 or higher.

2 Viewing the preview as a spectrogram requires Assets Server 6.95 or higher (not supported in Apple Safari). In earlier versions and in Safari, a file icon is shown instead.

Document files

For common document formats Assets Server extracts text so that any text contained in the file can be searched on.

Standard file types

InDesign ¹ / InCopy file types

¹ Only supported on Linux and Mac OS X (processing) server.

² Text extraction is not supported for InDesign. Instead, a PDF of the page is automatically linked to the InDesign document. The text of the PDF is fully searchable.

Tip: InDesign previews can be improved in the InDesign application where the document was created or edited. In the InDesign preferences you can change the file handling to create higher quality previews (up to 1024 pixels) from 1, 2, 5 or all pages (depending on the InDesign version). Assets Server reads out these previews on import.

Digital articles

¹ Archived Digital articles in JSON format.

Word file types

Powerpoint file types

Excel file types

iWork file types ¹

¹ Only supported on Mac OS X (processing) server.

Web files

¹ Only when security.enableHtmlPreviews is set to true. See Assets Server security features overview.

Flash files

XML files

Archive files

Revisions

• 16 December 2025: Added a footnote about support for generating previews for HEIC images from modern devices.