How to Add Picture in Power BI

Adding images to your Power BI report can transform a screen of numbers into a clear, engaging, and professional-looking story. Beyond just aesthetics, visuals like logos, product photos, or icons provide essential context that helps your audience understand the data at a glance. This guide will walk you through several methods for inserting images, from simple logos to dynamic pictures that automatically update based on your data selections.

Why Bother with Images in Power BI?

Before jumping into the "how," it helps to understand the "why." Integrating images into your reports isn't just about making them prettier, it serves several practical functions that lead to more effective business intelligence.

• Enhance Branding and Professionalism: Including your company's logo, or a client's logo, instantly makes a report feel customized and official. Consistent branding across your reports builds trust and reinforces a professional image.
• Provide Instant Context: Imagine a sales report that includes photos of the products being sold. Or an HR dashboard that displays pictures of employees next to their performance metrics. This visual context makes the data far easier and faster to interpret than rows of text alone.
• Increase User Engagement: A visually appealing report is more likely to capture and hold your audience's attention. Well-placed icons, graphics, or background images can guide the viewer's eye, break up dense information, and make the overall experience more intuitive and less intimidating.

Method 1: Adding a Static Image for Logos and Headers

This is the most straightforward method and is perfect for incorporating visuals that don't need to change, such as your company logo, report headers, or decorative icons. Think of these as the permanent fixtures on your report canvas.

Here’s the step-by-step process:

1. Navigate to the Insert Tab: In Power BI Desktop, look at the ribbon at the top of your screen. Click on the Insert tab to reveal a variety of elements you can add to your report.
2. Select 'Image': Within the 'Elements' section of the Insert ribbon, click the Image button.
3. Choose Your Image File: An 'Open' file dialog box will appear. Navigate through your local files to find the image you want to add. Power BI supports several common file types, including .PNG, .JPG, .GIF, and .BMP. Select your file and click Open.
4. Position and Resize: The image will appear on your report canvas. You can click and drag it to the desired position. To resize it, click on the image to select it, then drag the small white handles on its corners and edges.

Once your image is on the canvas, you can customize it further using the Format image pane on the right side of the screen. Simply select the image, and the formatting options will appear. Here, you can adjust settings like:

• Image fit: Choose how the image scales within its box ('Normal', 'Fit', or 'Fill').
• Border and Shadow: Add a border or a drop shadow to make the image pop.
• Action: You can turn your image into a clickable button! Expand the 'Action' section, turn it on, and you can make the image link to a bookmark, another report page, or an external website URL.

Method 2: Using an Image as a Page Background

Sometimes you don't want an image sitting on top of your report, you want it sitting behind everything. A subtle background texture, a watermark of your company logo, or a full-bleed image can add a layer of sophistication. This is different from a static image because it's part of the canvas itself, and your other visuals will sit on top of it.

Here's how to set a page background:

1. Deselect All Visuals: First, make sure you don't have any charts or elements selected. Simply click on a blank area of the report canvas.
2. Open the Format Pane: With the canvas selected, go to the Visualizations pane and click the icon that looks like a paintbrush, labeled Format your report page.
3. Expand 'Canvas background': In the list of formatting options, find and click on Canvas background to expand it.
4. Browse for Your Image: Click the Browse button next to the 'Image' field. This will open the file explorer, where you can select your desired background image.
5. Adjust Settings: Once the image is loaded, you can fine-tune its appearance. The two most important settings here are:

Method 3: Displaying Dynamic Images Based on Your Data

This is where Power BI really shines. You can configure your reports to display different images automatically, based on the data being filtered or presented. For example, a slicer could show images of product categories, or a table of top-performing salespeople could include their headshots. This method requires a bit more setup in your data model, but the results are incredibly impactful.

The trick is to use image URLs stored directly in your dataset.

Step 1: Get Your Image URLs Ready

First, your images must be available online and accessible via a public URL. They cannot be stored on your local computer's C: drive. You can host them on your company’s public website, a cloud storage service like Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, or even a public-facing folder in services like Imgur.

Next, you’ll need a column in your data table that contains the direct hyperlink to each corresponding image. Your data might look something like this:

Step 2: Set the Data as an Image URL

Once your data (including the URL column) is loaded into Power BI, you must tell Power BI that this specific column of text should be treated as a link to an image.

1. Go to the Data view or Model view by clicking the corresponding icon on the left-hand navigation bar.
2. Select the table that contains your image URLs from the 'Data' pane.
3. Click on the header of the column that contains the URLs (in our example, a 'ImageURL' column).
4. Selecting the column enables the Column tools tab in the ribbon at the top. Click on it.
5. Find the Category dropdown, and select Image.

This step is critical. It's the signal that tells Power BI, "Don't display a text, render the image that lives at this link." You'll see a small image icon appear next to the field's name in the pane, confirming you've set it correctly.

Step 3: Add the Dynamic Images to a Visual

Now you can use this data field in your report visuals. Tables, matrices, slicers, and certain custom visuals are excellent candidates.

Let's use a Table visual as an example:

1. Go back to the Report view.
2. Add a Table visual to your canvas from the Visualizations pane.
3. From the 'Data' pane, drag fields like ProductName and UnitsSold into the Columns area for the table.
4. Now, drag your ImageURL field into the table as well. Immediately, instead of showing the long web addresses, the table should render the actual images.

You can adjust the size of the images from the Format visual pane. Look under Visual > Image size to change the height and width of the images within the table cells until they look just right. This approach is also fantastic for creating an image slicer, allowing users to filter the entire report by clicking on a product photo.

Common Issues and Best Practices

Even with the steps above, you might run into a few hurdles. Here are a few quick tips and best practices to keep in mind:

• Broken Images: If your dynamic images aren't showing up, the first thing to check is the URL. Copy one of the URLs from your data table and paste it into an incognito browser window. If the image doesn't load, then Power BI can't access it either. Make sure the links aren't private or require a login to access.
• Performance Check: Using many high-resolution images, especially in a table with hundreds of rows, can seriously slow down your report's loading and performance. It's a good practice to use web-optimized, smaller-file-size images whenever possible.
• Custom Visuals: Don't forget to explore the AppSource marketplace! There are many free, third-party custom visuals that offer more advanced ways to display images, such as card visuals and advanced carousels.
• SharePoint Hosting: Hosting images on SharePoint or OneDrive can be tricky. Default "share" links from these services often lead to a webpage displaying the image, not the image file itself. You need to ensure you're using a direct link to the image file, which sometimes involves restructuring the share URL.

Final Thoughts

Incorporating images is one of the easiest ways to elevate your Power BI report from simple data tables to compelling, easy-to-digest narratives. Whether you're adding a static logo for a branded dashboard, a styled background for professionalism, or dynamic product pictures in a table, the techniques above can significantly improve your user experience.

Bringing your data to life with visuals is at the core of effective reporting. If you spend time adding the right images to make your data understandable on one platform, you know the value of presenting clear insights. That's why we built Graphed . We automate the whole reporting process by letting you connect your marketing and sales sources in one place and build live interactive dashboards just by asking questions in plain English - no wrestling with formatting panes or data categories required.