How to Add Image to Power BI Desktop

Adding images to your Power BI reports transforms them from simple data grids into engaging, professional-looking dashboards. Whether it's your company logo, product photos, or employee headshots, visuals provide critical context and make your reports far more intuitive. This guide walks you through the different ways to add both static and dynamic images to your Power BI Desktop file.

Why Add Images to Your Power BI Reports?

While charts and graphs are the backbone of any report, images serve a few important purposes. They can break up text-heavy areas, making your reports easier to read and understand. More importantly, images provide immediate context that numbers alone can't. For example, in a sales report, including a small photo of each product next to its sales figures can provide instant recognition and deeper insights into performance. Similarly, a company logo reinforces branding, and flags next to country names provide quick visual cues.

• Better visual appeal: Images grab attention and make your dashboard more engaging.
• Increased user understanding: A picture often tells a story faster than numbers, improving the overall readability and user interpretation of your report.
• Branding and consistency: Including a company logo makes your reports look professional, consistent, and recognizable within your team or for clients.
• Deeper data context: Visuals like product images or employee photos directly link the data to real-world items or people.

Method 1: Adding a Static Image to Your Report Canvas

The most straightforward method is adding a static image directly onto your report. This is perfect for elements that don’t need to change based on your data, like a company logo, icons, or headers that you want to display on every page.

When to use this method:

• Adding your company or client logo.
• Inserting icons or graphical elements for design.
• Including a static image header or footer.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Follow these simple steps to add and position an image on your Power BI report page.

1. Navigate to the page in your report where you want to add the image.
2. In the top ribbon, click on the Insert tab.
3. In the "Elements" section of the ribbon, click the Image button.
4. A file browser window will pop up. Navigate to the image file (.jpeg, .png, .gif, etc.) you want to add, select it, and click Open.
5. The image will appear on your report canvas. You can then click and drag it to the desired position.
6. Resize the image by clicking on it and dragging one of the corner handles, just as you would in PowerPoint or Word.
7. To adjust the image's properties, select it and go to the Format image panel on the right. Here you can add a border, shadow, adjust its style, and more.

This method is quick and easy, but remember the image is static. It won’t change if you filter your data, and it's not connected to your dataset in any way.

Method 2: Using an Image as a Page Background

Another way to enhance the visual design of your report is by setting an image as the entire background of a report page. This can be used for subtle watermarks, branding elements, or to create a specific visual theme for your dashboard.

When this feature is useful:

• To display a subtle company watermark behind your visuals.
• To create a custom color scheme with a branded background graphic.
• To design themed reports (e.g., using a seasonal background).

Step-by-Step Instructions

Setting a page background takes just a few clicks in the formatting pane.

1. Click on an empty space on your report canvas so that no visuals are selected.
2. In the Visualizations pane on the right side of the screen, click the icon that looks like a paint roller to open the Format your report page options.
3. Expand the Canvas background section.
4. Click the Browse button next to "Image." Locate the image you want to use and click Open.
5. By default, the image might not be visible because the Transparency is set to 100%. Drag the transparency slider to the left (e.g., to 70% or 80%) to make the background image visible but not overpowering.
6. You can also change the Image fit to "Fit," "Fill," or "Normal" to control how the image scales to the page size. "Fill" usually works best for background purposes.

A good background image is subtle. It should enhance your report, not distract from the data being presented. Use high transparency and simple graphics to avoid visual clutter.

Method 3: Displaying Dynamic Images Using Web URLs

This is where Power BI's imaging capabilities really start to shine. Instead of a static image, you can pull images from web URLs and display them dynamically in your tables, matrices, and other visuals. This means the image shown can change based on the data in that row.

Why Dynamic Images Are a Game-Changer

Imagine a sales report showing a list of products. With dynamic images, you can display a small photo of each product right next to its name and sales figures. It’s perfect for:

• Product catalogs.
• Employee directories with headshots.
• Lists of countries with their corresponding flags.
• Machine performance reports with photos of the equipment.

Step 1: Get Your Data Ready

First, your underlying data source must contain a column filled with direct, publicly accessible URLs for each image. For this to work, anyone with the link needs to be able to view the image without a login. Simply copy-pasting one of the URLs into your web browser is a good way to test this.

Your data might look something like this in Excel or a database table:

Step 2: Load Data and Set the Data Category

This is the most important step. You need to tell Power BI that the text in this column isn't just text - it's an image URL.

1. Load your data into Power BI as usual using Get Data.
2. Go to the Data view on the left side (the grid icon).
3. Click on the header of the column that contains your image URLs to select it.
4. At the top, the Column tools tab will appear in the ribbon.
5. Find the Data category dropdown menu (it's likely set to "Uncategorized" by default).
6. Click the dropdown and select Image URL. A small picture icon might appear next to your column name, confirming the change.

Step 3: Use the Images in a Visual

Now that Power BI knows what to do with those URLs, you can add them to visuals like a table or matrix.

1. Go back to the Report view (the bar chart icon).
2. Add a Table visual to your canvas from the Visualizations pane.
3. From the Data pane, drag your Product Name and Sales Amount fields into the "Columns" area of the visual.
4. Now, drag your ProductImageURL field into the same area. Presto! Instead of showing the long URL text, Power BI will fetch and display the actual images in the table row.
5. You can adjust the image size in the table by going to the Format your visual section > Image size and setting the height and width in pixels.

This method is powerful because it links visuals directly to your data model. If you filter your report for "T-Shirt," you'll see only the T-shirt image and its corresponding data.

Method 4: Embedding Images with Base64 Encoding (Advanced)

What if your images aren't hosted on a public web server? Or what if you want your report to be fully self-contained for offline viewing? In this case, you can embed the image data directly into your report using Base64 encoding.

When to use Base64:

• When image files are stored on a local machine or private network.
• For reports that must be viewable offline, without an internet connection.
• When you don't have control over web hosting for your images.

Fair warning: this method is more technical and involves Power Query. It also increases the size of your Power BI file, so it's best for small images. Large images can quickly bloat your file and hurt performance.

The Concept

Base64 is a method of converting binary data (like an image file) into a plain text string. We can then tell Power BI to read this text string and render it as an image. This requires two steps: transforming the image into a Base64 text string and adding a prefix so Power BI recognizes it.

Step-by-Step with Power Query

1. First, you’ll need a column in a table that contains the full file path to where each image is stored (e.g., "C:\Images\shoe.jpg"). Let's call this column [ImagePath].
2. Open the Power Query Editor by clicking Transform data in the Home ribbon.
3. Select your query. Go to the Add Column tab and click Custom Column.
4. Give your new column a name, like "ImageBase64". In the formula box, you'll need a command to read the file and convert it. The M code looks like this:

"data:image/jpeg,base64, " & Binary.ToText(File.Contents([ImagePath]), BinaryEncoding.Base64)

Breaking down the formula:

• File.Contents([ImagePath]) reads the image file as binary data from the path in your [ImagePath] column.
• Binary.ToText(..., BinaryEncoding.Base64) converts that binary data into a long Base64 text string.
• "data:image/jpeg,base64, " is a required prefix that tells browsers and Power BI how to interpret the text string that follows. Note: Change /jpeg to /png if you're using PNG files.

1. Click OK. Power Query will process each file path and generate the full Base64 string for each row.
2. Once you have this new column, click Close & Apply.
3. Just like with the URL method, you now need to set the Data Category. Select the new ImageBase64 column, go to Column tools, and set the Data category to Image URL.

Even though it contains Base64 text and not a URL, Power BI uses the same "Image URL" category to render it. You can now use this field in tables and other visuals exactly like you did in Method 3. Each time, it will render the embedded image directly from the data model, no internet required.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, Power BI offers several flexible ways to incorporate images into your reports. From simple static logos for branding, to fully dynamic, data-driven visuals pulled from URLs or an embedded image, these techniques help bridge the gap between raw data and actionable insights that your team can grasp instantly.

While mastering these techniques in Power BI is a valuable skill, it often involves a lot of manual configuration in Power Query or managing column data types. It’s a process that can feel overly complex for creating a simple dashboard. Built for marketing and sales teams, we created Graphed to streamline this entire workflow. Instead of configuring dashboards manually, you just connect your data sources (like Shopify or Google Analytics) and describe what you want to see - "Show me a dashboard of top-selling products by revenue, including product images" - and a live, professional dashboard is built for you in seconds.