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Setting default thumbnail and preview quality in Fotoware
How to configure the site-wide quality of thumbnails and previews.
21. October 2026
Table of Contents
You can configure the quality of thumbnails and previews generated by Fotoware, including JPEG quality and sharpening.
From the Tools menu (cogwheel icon), go to Site Configuration > Appearance > Renditions.
Thumbnail and preview quality
Use the Thumbnails and Previews settings to control the quality of the images that Fotoware generates.
Note
Asset representations smaller than 200 pixels use the Thumbnails settings. Representations larger than 200 pixels use the Previews settings. Therefore, if you configure thumbnails larger than 200 pixels, the Previews settings determine how they are rendered.
File size
The preview generator has a file size limit of 200 MB. For larger files, a placeholder image is displayed.
Quality: Controls the JPEG quality and compression level. The valid range is 0–100, with higher values producing higher-quality images and larger file sizes. The recommended default is 80, which provides a balance between image quality and download size.
Increasing the quality can improve the appearance of thumbnails and previews, but it also increases file size. Larger images take longer to download, increase network traffic, and reduce the number of images that can be stored in the Fotoware cache.
What's affected by the quality settings?
The thumbnail and preview quality settings apply site-wide to:
- Thumbnails and previews in the main Fotoware interface and Fotoware Pro interface
- Poster images and keyframes for video files
- Previews used for picture conferencing in Fotoware Screens
- Previews used by the image Crop module in Fotoware Desktop
Sharpening thumbnails and previews
When sharpening is enabled, Fotoware applies an unsharp mask filter to thumbnails and previews. You may want to apply stronger sharpening to thumbnails than to previews.
If you change the unsharp mask settings, you will only see the effects on images that are not already in the cache.
Set defaults: Resets the unsharp mask settings to the recommended values.