AEM Assets and Dynamic Media: Responsive Image Delivery Architecture.

Record how an author selects an asset, how that asset becomes available for delivery and how the component chooses an image URL. A page rendering successfully does not prove that its image request is correctly sized or publicly available.

Original-size downloads, unsuitable crops and inconsistent transformation parameters can undermine a responsive component. The contract must cover both visual intent and delivery behavior.

AEM Sites renders the component markup; Dynamic Media supplies transformed imagery through its configured delivery URLs. Inspect the actual asset host and caching behavior instead of assuming every image traverses the page’s Dispatcher path.

Define reviewed image presets or transformation conventions that match real component widths and crop needs. Pair them with responsive markup and sensible dimensions so the browser can select an appropriate resource.

• Validate the generated URL and transformation parameters.
• Check asset publication independently from page publication.
• Preserve meaningful alternative text and author-controlled visual intent.

An agreed set of image sizes and presets is easier to reason about than unconstrained URL variations. Allow exceptions deliberately where editorial composition needs them.

Fine-grained variants can fit more layouts but create more URLs to validate and cache. Aggressive cropping also risks changing the intended subject, so performance choices need editorial review.

For the separate page-delivery policy, compare Dispatcher and CDN response identity and invalidation.

Use representative viewport sizes and assets to verify delivery, without inventing a performance improvement.

• Inspect selected resource dimensions, transferred bytes and content type.
• Check crop intent, missing-asset behavior and layout stability.
• Update an asset and verify freshness at its delivery URL.

The author should not need to understand delivery URL syntax to produce a correct experience. Keep transformation choices predictable and diagnose image delivery independently from HTML caching.

These sources document product behavior. The design and validation approach above are engineering proposals, not claims made by the vendors.

• Adobe: Dynamic Media image preset guide