# Tableau Image roles: Working with Images in Tableau | New in Tableau 2022.4

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2022-12-14
- **Format:** Video · 11 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data visualisation, Tool strategy
- **Tools:** Tableau (cloud, dashboards, image roles, performance)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/tableau-image-roles-working-with-images-in-tableau-new-in-tableau-2022-4
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37xBp2BCQgw

I walk through the new native image role feature introduced in Tableau 2022.4, showing how to assign an image role to a URL column and display images on a dashboard. I demonstrate it in web edit on Tableau Cloud and cover the catches, limitations and best practices you need to know.

## Key takeaways

- To use image roles, click a column's drop-down, select image role then URL, and Tableau will load the images natively into your view
- The feature has a hard limit of 500 images per view, so you must filter your data down before it will render
- Images must be publicly accessible JPEG or PNG files (no GIFs) and ideally under 128KB each in file size
- High image complexity can trigger server-side rendering instead of faster client-side rendering, slowing dashboard performance
- Services like Cloudinary can dynamically resize and transform images via the URL to keep file sizes within Tableau's limits

## Chapters

- 0:44 Setting up and previewing data in web edit
- 2:15 Applying the image role to a URL column
- 3:21 The 500 image limit and building the view
- 4:11 Use cases and data source requirements
- 6:19 Performance and client-side rendering
- 7:42 File size limits and Cloudinary

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/tableau-image-roles-working-with-images-in-tableau-new-in-tableau-2022-4

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena