Hi @daveporter!
The difference between the fade and crossfade animations is that in case of fade, the next background image will be displayed over the current one, whereas for the crossfade, the first fades out while the next fades in. By default the background of the slider is transparent, and if you have a light background behind the slider and you are fading a light image, then you will not see that effect very well compared to a darker image.
The duration and the easing are related to the main animation:
https://smartslider.helpscoutdocs.com/article/1779-slider-settings-animations
but if you have these on default, then these have not been changed since their release, so there isn’t much to set here. You could try using a more optimized image as well, perhaps the issue is that you have too big of an image and the browser doesn’t have enough memory to handle the switch.
