How to load large images in PowerBi

Question

I want to load pictures in PowerBi, problem is that pictures are a bit bigger than 32kb so it's showing just a part of the picture. Is there some quick way to go around PowerBi limitation and display entire picture?

I fetched pictures from activite directory, then I converted binary file to text in order to set them as a picture (using this formula : data:image/jpeg;base64)

Answer 1

There is a great article by Chriss Webb, Storing Large Images In Power BI Datasets, from which I will copy the essentials here, in case the original article is not available.

Quote from Chriss Webb's article

The maximum length of a text value that the Power Query engine can load into a single cell in a table in a dataset is 32766 characters – any more than that and the text will be silently truncated. To work around this, what you need to do is to split the text representation of the image up into multiple smaller text values stored across multiple rows, each of which is less than the 32766 character limit, and then reassemble them in a DAX measure after the data has been loaded.

Splitting the text up in M is actually not that hard, but it is hard to do efficiently. Here’s an example of an M query that reads all the data from all of the files in the folder above and returns a table:

let
    //Get list of files in folder
    Source = Folder.Files("C:\Users\Chris\Documents\PQ Pics"),
    //Remove unnecessary columns
    RemoveOtherColumns = Table.SelectColumns(Source,{"Content", "Name"}),
    //Creates Splitter function
    SplitTextFunction = Splitter.SplitTextByRepeatedLengths(30000),
    //Converts table of files to list
    ListInput = Table.ToRows(RemoveOtherColumns),
    //Function to convert binary of photo to multiple
    //text values
    ConvertOneFile = (InputRow as list) =>
        let
            BinaryIn = InputRow{0},
            FileName = InputRow{1},
            BinaryText = Binary.ToText(BinaryIn, BinaryEncoding.Base64),
            SplitUpText = SplitTextFunction(BinaryText),
            AddFileName = List.Transform(SplitUpText, each {FileName,_})
        in
            AddFileName,
    //Loops over all photos and calls the above function
    ConvertAllFiles = List.Transform(ListInput, each ConvertOneFile(_)),
    //Combines lists together
    CombineLists = List.Combine(ConvertAllFiles),
    //Converts results to table
    ToTable = #table(type table[Name=text,Pic=text],CombineLists),
    //Adds index column to output table
    AddIndexColumn = Table.AddIndexColumn(ToTable, "Index", 0, 1)
in
    AddIndexColumn

Here’s what the query above returns:

The Pic column contains the split text values, each of which are less than the 32766 character limit, so when this table is loaded into Power BI no truncation occurs. The index column is necessary because without it we won’t be able to recombine all the split values in the correct order.

The only thing left to do is to create a measure that uses the DAX ConcatenateX() function to concatenate all of the pieces of text back into a single value, like so:

Display Image =
IF(
    HASONEVALUE('PQ Pics'[Name]),
    "data:image/jpeg;base64, " &
    CONCATENATEX(
        'PQ Pics',
        'PQ Pics'[Pic],
        ,
        'PQ Pics'[Index],
        ASC)
        )

…set the data category of this measure to be “Image URL”:

…and then display the value of the image in a report:

Answer 2

Storing images directly in Power BI is not the best option as using the convert to base64 method you'll be limited to 32KB in size. If possible it would be best to extract the images, and place them in a Azure Blob Store (or other accessible store) and reference them from there. You can use the datatype Image URL to show in a table, or the HTML viewer custom visual to show the image via a url. You'll have to use Power BI to get the list of images in Blob Storage, but if the image name is the same you could link that table to your dataset.