How to Add Image in Card in Power BI

Power BI’s card visual is fantastic for displaying a single, important number, but have you ever tried to add an image to it? You quickly discover it's not a built-in feature. This post will show you how to work around that limitation. We’ll cover a few practical methods to create visually engaging cards that combine key metrics with images, making your reports more intuitive and impactful.

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Why Bother Adding Images to Your Reports?

Dashboards are all about communicating information quickly. While numbers are essential, images add context and improve comprehension at a glance. Think about it:

• E-commerce Dashboards: Displaying top-selling product images next to their sales numbers.
• Employee Directories: Showing employee headshots next to their performance metrics or contact info.
• Social Media Reports: Visualizing the best-performing ad creative alongside its click-through rate.
• Account Management KPIs: Pairing a client's logo with their monthly recurring revenue (MRR).

Images transform sterile reports into dynamic, story-driven dashboards that people will actually want to look at. They reduce the mental effort required to understand what you're seeing.

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Data Preparation: The One Essential Step

Before using any of the methods below, you need to prepare your data. Power BI can't store images directly in the dataset, instead, it renders images from a URL. This means you must have a column in your data table that contains a publicly accessible URL for each image.

Here’s the critical step: Once your data is loaded into Power BI, you must tell it that this column contains image links.

1. Navigate to the Data view (the table icon on the left).
2. Select the table that contains your image links.
3. Click on the header of the column containing the URLs. This will open the Column tools in the ribbon at the top.
4. In the 'Properties' section, click on the dropdown for Data category.
5. Select Image URL.

This simple setting is what tells Power BI to display the image from the link, not just the text of the link itself. With that done, you're ready to start building.

Method 1: The 'Table' Visual Makeover

The most flexible and reliable way to create a grid of image-and-text cards is by cleverly formatting a standard Table visual. It gives you precise control over layout and allows you to display multiple data points alongside your image.

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Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Add a Table Visual: Go to the Visualizations pane and add a new Table to your report canvas.
2. Add Your Data Fields: Drag the fields you want to display into the 'Columns' bucket of the visual. Be sure to include your Image URL column, along with metrics like 'Product Name', 'Total Sales', or 'Units Sold'. At first, it will look like a standard, boring table.
3. Adjust Image Size: This is where the magic happens. Go to the 'Format your visual' panel (the paintbrush icon). Expand the Specific column section. In the 'Apply settings to' dropdown, select your image URL column. You will now see an 'Image size' option. Increase the height and width until the images are a good size. For example, setting the height to 150 px can work well.
4. Clean Up the Styling: To make the table look like a set of cards instead of a spreadsheet, you’ll need to format it. Under 'Format your visual':
5. Add a Filter: Finally, to make it function like a card for a single item (like your top-performing product), use the Filters pane. Drag your main identifier (like Product Name) into the filter area, select 'Top N', and configure it to show the 'Top 1' item based on your key metric (like Total Sales).

Method 2: Using the Multi-row Card

The Multi-row Card visual is primarily designed for text, but since we've categorized our image column as an Image URL, it can render the image. This method is simpler than the Table approach but offers less formatting control.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Add a Multi-row Card: Add the visual to your report canvas from the Visualizations pane.
2. Add Your Image and Data: Drag your Image URL column into the 'Fields' bucket, followed by the text or number fields you want to display. The image will appear automatically.
3. Format the Card: Use the 'Format your visual' panel to make adjustments. You’ll probably want to go into the Cards section and turn off the accent bar. In the Callout values and Category labels sections, you can adjust fonts and sizes. In the Layout section, you can control the spacing between cards.
4. Apply a Filter: Just like with the table method, if you want to show a single "card," you'll need to use the Filters pane to filter for the specific item you want to highlight.

Method 3: Layering Standard Visuals & Custom Visuals

For ultimate design freedom, you can place separate visuals on top of each other. This is great for an executive summary where you only need one dynamic card.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Get a Custom Image Visual: The default image visual in Power BI isn't dynamic. You'll need one from the community marketplace (AppSource). In the Visualizations pane, click the three dots (...) and select 'Get more visuals'. Search for a visual like Simple Image and add it to Power BI.
2. Configure the Image: Add the Simple Image visual to your canvas and drag your Image URL field into its 'Image URL' bucket. Apply a 'Top 1' filter as described in Method 1 to show only the image you want.
3. Add a Standard Card: Place a regular 'Card' visual on the canvas. Drag your primary metric (e.g., 'Total Sales') into its field bucket.
4. Add Text Boxes or Other Cards: For additional information like a product name, you can use a 'Text Box' or another 'Card' visual formatted to display text.
5. Layer and Group: Arrange the image, card, and text box to look like a single, cohesive unit. You can turn off the backgrounds of the visuals to help them blend. Once you have them positioned correctly, CTRL-click to select them all, right-click, and choose Group. Now they will move and resize as a single element.

This method requires the most manual setup but gives you complete control over the positioning and formatting of each element.

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Final Thoughts

While Power BI doesn't offer a direct 'Image Card' visual, you can get the job done by creatively using Tables, Multi-row Cards, or by layering custom visuals. Formatting a table gives you the most flexibility for grids, while layering provides pixel-perfect control for a single featured card. These techniques will help you create dashboards that are far more engaging and easier to interpret.

Mastering workarounds in tools like Power BI is a valuable skill, but we know first-hand how much time it can take away from actual analysis. At Graphed, we’ve focused on eliminating that steep learning curve and all the manual setup. Instead of clicking through formatting panels to build a report card by card, you can simply connect your data sources and describe the dashboard you want to see - "Show me a dashboard of my top 10 Shopify products by sales for this quarter, including product images" - and we build it for you instantly. It's about getting straight to the insights, without the headache.