MicrosoftSome considerations:
Does the owner want to share the images, or even have them accessible to others?
Does the =Image() facility facilitate the images being on protected locations?
Does the facility facilitate security of data access to protected locations?
Does having the data on a backup (saved to OneDrive as a set of folders) allow copying to a replacement PC?
Does having the images on a cloud device work for an air-gapped environment?
Does having the images on a cloud device work for laptops in the mountains, deserts, tundra, or other non broadband & cell-phone 4G or 5G serviced environments?
And even with a set of images on a server - how does the development, testing, and operational environments co-exist with easy change of the working data set?
Regarding the images being imbedded in an App's data file -
My concern about that in many environments would be the RAM needed to handle large volumes of images at current 4K resolution & 24 bit colour 4000x2000x3 = 12MB each
New phones for 2023 looking to have a resolution of 120Mega pixels @ 24 bit colour that's 3 per GB !
So 4GB file for 12 images ? and many Apps want to load in the entire file to RAM and/or Pagefile with such as Excel probably running, or failing depending on the available .
OK you could have an expandable Pagefile with the needed MFT and bit-table management to increase the file size by 1? block at a time - say 30 minutes I/O on a SSD to get the pagefile from 8GB to 64GB for a testing workbook with 200 images - and how many staff (ID) images will be in the MS staff file?
Overnight Ocean Warming ?
