Showing Database Images in Power BI and Tabular

The Power BI image-rendering visualizations, such as Table or Card, expect image links to public servers hosting the images with anonymous permissions. This has obvious shortcomings. Can we load images from a database or Power BI data table? You bet, as Jason Thomas has demonstrated a long time ago. Here are the steps I followed to show the images from the Production.ProductPhoto table in the AdventureWorks2012 (or later) database. If you want to embed a few images into a Power BI data table (instead of an external database), you can convert them manually to Base64 using any of the online image converters, such as https://codebeautify.org/image-to-base64-converter and embed the resulting string into a Power BI data table (the Enter Data feature). Gerhard Brueckl takes this one step further by showing you how to automate the base64 conversion with many images.

1. Import the table with the image column as usual in Power BI.
2. In Power Query, change the data type of the image column to Text.
3. Add a new custom column that prefixes the base64 string with “data:image/jpeg;base64,” (not the comma at the end) for jpeg images or “data:image/png;base64,” for png.
   = Table.AddColumn(#”Changed Type”, “ProductImageEncoded”, each “data:image/jpeg;base64,” & [ThumbNailPhoto]).
   The ProductImageEncoded column below shows what the final Power Query transformation should look like. Click Close & Apply to import the table in the data model as you’re done with the transformation part.
   
4. In Power BI Desktop, select the ProductImageEncoded field in the Fields pane. Assuming the new ribbon, in the Column Tools ribbon, change the field category to Image URL.
5. Add the ProductImageEncoded field to a Table, Card, Multicard, or Slicer visuals.