Showing images in tables

It is possible to show images in the cells of a table visualization. A Spotfire analysis or information link can contain a data table with images that will be shown in the column in the table visualization.

About this task

Note: Some of the functionality described here can only be authored or accessed using the installed Spotfire client.

If the column values are in the form of a URL you can also retrieve images from another location. Use Image from URL as the selected Renderer to show linked images. A geographical shape feature from a shapefiles or GeoJSON can also be shown, using the Geometry renderer. For information about what you need to present geographical data in Spotfire, see Specifying new geocoding tables and Adding a feature layer. See also Renderer settings for more information.

Another way of including pictures in the table visualization is if the column is a virtual column, collecting the images from a remote data source. For more information on virtual columns, see the Virtual columns page.

You can change the renderer for a specific column in a table visualization using the following steps:

Procedure

Open the visualization properties and locate the Columns section.
Select the column containing the image data and specify the appropriate renderer.
- Use Image for BLOB data with images directly in the data table.
- Use Geometry for geographical data.
- Use Image from URL to fetch images from a web location.
If necessary, change the renderer settings for the selected renderer.

Tip: It is also possible to change the default renderer for different content types from the Tools > Options menu. This will affect all future table visualizations, and can be useful if you know that you always want a certain column with a specific content type to be rendered the same way. For more information, see the Renderer settings dialog.

Note: The height of the rows in the table visualization might not be suited for showing images by default. See Changing height and width in tables to change the row height manually.

Copying the image

It is possible to copy the images from the table. To do this, right-click the cell with the image and select Copy Cell > Image.

Note: If the table contains images, these will not be exported if the data from the table visualization is exported to a text file. To preserve the images in the exported file, select File > Export > Visualization to Microsoft Excel.

Note: Remember that your internet options settings affect the table visualizations and the text area, so if you have trouble viewing images, make sure that Show pictures is enabled in your web browser.