How to Add an Image to Power BI Report

Adding images to your Power BI report transforms it from a wall of numbers into a compelling, easy-to-digest story. From your company logo for branding to dynamic product photos that update with your filters, visuals provide context and make your data much more engaging. This guide will walk you through several effective methods for incorporating images into your Power BI reports.

Why Add Images to Your Power BI Reports?

Before we jump into the "how," let's quickly cover the "why." Images aren't just for decoration, they serve critical functions that improve the usability and impact of your reports.

• Branding and Professionalism: Including your company logo and brand colors adds a professional touch and ensures consistency across all business communications.
• Visual Context: A picture is truly worth a thousand words. Showing a photo of a product next to its sales figures, a headshot of a sales representative next to their performance, or a country flag next to regional data provides instant context that numbers alone cannot.
• Improved User Experience (UX): Using icons for buttons or navigation makes your report more intuitive. Instead of reading text, users can instantly recognize a symbol and know what to do.
• Enhanced Storytelling: Images make data more relatable. Seeing the actual products, people, or places you're analyzing forges a stronger connection between the user and the information, making the insights more memorable.

Method 1: Adding a Static Image

This is the most straightforward method and is perfect for adding logos, icons, or any other image that doesn't need to change. Think of it as adding a permanent fixture to your report canvas.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. On the main Power BI Desktop ribbon, click the Insert tab.
2. In the 'Elements' section, click on Image.
3. A file explorer window will open. Navigate to the image file you want to add (Power BI supports formats like .png, .jpg, .gif, and more).
4. Select the image and click Open.

The image will now appear on your report canvas. You can click and drag it to position it anywhere you like and use the corner handles to resize it.

To fine-tune its appearance, select the image and use the Format pane on the right side of the screen. Here you can:

• Add Alt Text: Under the 'General' section, you can add descriptive alternative text. This is crucial for accessibility, as it allows screen readers to describe the image to visually impaired users.
• Add a Border: Under 'Visual Border', you can toggle a border on and adjust its color and thickness.
• Use a Transparent Background: For logos, it's highly recommended to use a PNG file with a transparent background. This prevents an awkward white or colored box from appearing around your logo, allowing it to blend seamlessly with your report's design.

Method 2: Using an Image as a Page Background

Setting a background image can give your report a polished, custom feel. This is great for creating executive summaries or themed dashboards that align with a specific marketing campaign or brand guidelines.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Click on an empty space on your report canvas so that no visuals are selected.
2. In the Visualizations pane, click the icon that looks like a paint roller, labeled "Format your report page."
3. Expand the Canvas background section.
4. Click the Browse button next to 'Image'.
5. Select the image you want to use as a background and click Open.

By default, the image might be hidden because the canvas color is at 0% transparency. To see your background image, you'll need to reduce the transparency of the canvas background or any visual elements sitting on top of it. In the same 'Canvas background' section, you will see a ‘Transparency’ option – reduce that percentage to make your image visible.

A few key settings here:

• Image fit: This controls how the image scales to the page. 'Fill' will stretch the image to cover the entire canvas without distorting its proportions, while 'Fit' will resize it to fit within the canvas while maintaining its original proportions.
• Transparency: This is the most crucial setting. For a background, you'll likely want to set the transparency to 85% or higher. This fades the image into the background so it adds atmosphere without distracting from your data visualizations.

Method 3: Adding Dynamic Images From Your Data

This is where Power BI's capabilities truly shine. You can display different images based on the data in your report. For example, in a sales report, you can show a picture of each product next to its sales figures. When a user filters by a different product category, the images automatically update.

The Prerequisite: A Column of Image URLs

To make this work, your data source (whether it's an Excel sheet, a database, or another source) must include a column that contains direct URLs to each image. For this to work, the images must be:

• Stored online (e.g., on your company website, in cloud storage like Azure Blob Storage, or on a public image hosting site).
• Publicly accessible, meaning they don’t require a login to be viewed. A good test is to paste the URL into an incognito browser window. If the image loads, you're good to go.

Let's say you have a 'Products' table. It might look something like this:

Step 1: Set the Data Category in Power BI

Once you’ve loaded your data into Power BI, you need to tell it that your URL column contains images.

1. Go to the Data view or Model view by clicking the corresponding icon on the left-hand side of the Power BI window.
2. Select the table and then click on the column header for the column containing your image URLs (e.g., 'ProductImageURL').
3. A Column tools tab will appear in the top ribbon.
4. In the 'Properties' section, click the Data category dropdown menu and change it from 'Uncategorized' to Image URL.

This simple act instructs Power BI to fetch and render the image from that URL instead of just displaying the URL text.

Step 2: Display the Dynamic Images in Visuals

Now you can use this field in visuals just like any other data field.

In a Table or Matrix:

1. Go back to the Report view.
2. Add a Table visual to your canvas.
3. From the 'Fields' pane, drag the ProductName and Sales fields into the 'Values' area of the table.
4. Next, drag your ProductImageURL field into the same 'Values' area.

And that's it! Instead of showing the text URLs, the table will now display the actual images in each row. You might need to adjust the column width and row height (under Format Visual -> Grid -> Options) to give the images enough space.

In a Card or Slicer:

While the standard card visual doesn't support images, you can use slicers or custom visuals for a more interactive experience. For example, the Chiclet Slicer (a free custom visual from AppSource) is excellent for this. After adding it to your report, you can add your ProductImageURL field to its "Image" well, creating a grid of clickable images that filter your report.

Tips for Success and Troubleshooting

• Image Performance: High-resolution images can seriously slow down your report's load time. Before uploading your images, resize and compress them to a reasonable web-friendly size. An image in a small table cell rarely needs to be more than a few hundred pixels wide.
• Broken Images: If you see broken image icons, the most common culprits are either the URL is incorrect/no longer exists, or the URL is not publicly accessible. Double-check your links.
• Image Consistency: For dynamic images in tables, try to use images with the same aspect ratio. This keeps your rows neatly aligned and provides a cleaner, more professional look.
• Custom Visuals: Don't be afraid to explore AppSource for more image-related visuals. Search for "image" or "gallery" to find custom visuals like Simple Image, Image Grid, or Image Carousel which offer additional formatting and functionality.

Final Thoughts

Mastering the use of images in Power BI elevates your reports from simple data displays to dynamic, branded dashboards that drive engagement and tell a clearer story. Whether you're adding a static company logo, a subtle background texture, or a dynamic gallery of product photos, a well-placed visual makes your insights more accessible and impactful.

Building dashboards click-by-click in tools like Power BI is incredibly powerful, but sometimes it can feel tedious and slow, especially when you know what you want but have to navigate complex menus to build it. We created Graphed to simplify this entire process. Instead of dragging and dropping fields, you just describe the dashboard you need in plain English - like "Show me a chart of sales by product with product images" - and we build it for you in seconds, with live data from sources like Shopify, Google Analytics, and Salesforce.