Tinderbox can embed and show bitmap images in two places:
- In note body text. Such images are exported via HTML export.
- Map image adornments. These cannot be exported but the overall View pane can be exported using the 'Copy View as Image' Edit menu option.
These images are embedded into the Tinderbox document and form part of the data (and stored size) to the TBX file. Depending on the nature of a TBX document, it may make sense to store large images externally and link to them.
If the TBX is primarily intended for export, such as this document, it may make more sense to store the images outside the TBX and link the exported pages to the external assets. Given that embedded images do not export (at least not currently) then it is possible for a note to have both an embedded image for viewing within Tinderbox and separately alongside it export code that links to an externally stored copy of the image for use with HTML output.
Tinderbox compresses images; this substantially decreases the size of Tinderbox files with embedded images. Tinderbox currently uses JPEG compression, and compresses fairly aggressively; this significantly diminishes the size and loading time of Tinderbox files at the cost of some image degradation.
Another way images may be used as fills for Map view notes and adornments and the view background (see $Fill and $MapBackgroundFill).