Images are kept in the termbase (actually an access database). You can verify it if you rename the folder with the pictures and check that they are still available.

I don't know about your second question, but I believe that images are saved in their native size. I haven't noticed that termbases with images are slower than termbases without images, although they increase in size. My major concern with image size is that images should be just big enough to be useful in the scarce screen space, so I often resize images before inserting them in the termbase. I'd like to hear more about this as well.

Thank you Jesús Prieto. So they are part of the SDLTB file?

Yes, images are stored in the SDLTB file.

Out of curiosity, I renamed a SDLTB to MDB, opened it in Access and saw a table with the images content.

Daniel, the images are saved as "BLOBs" (binary large objects). In fact, a BLOB is as a file stored in a field in a relational database and each termbase internally has a dedicated space to save all kinds of blob files: PDF, Excel, Word, jpg, png, you name it. The blob content will end up as a "long text field', previously called 'memo field', inside an XML structure, in the same way as some web pages (see fragmented image below). However, when you are exploring a database with a third party tool (other than SDL MultiTerm Desktop) like Tb-Scout, you will only see the name of the original file (without the directory path). And that bring us to the location issue. You need not worry about the location, once an image or PDF file, etc, is saved into a termbase you can change the location, taking with you only the .sdltb file (you can even forget about the other .mdf and .mtf files), open it and find all your images right there. Regarding size, keep in mind that the maximum size of a termbase database is just 2GB, so the more images you add, the more it grows.

Hi

Forgive me for being so persistent, but do I understand correctly that the Blob is simply the image file ecoded in base64? So a 600 x 400 px TIF file would result in a large Blob, while the same image as 200 x 150 px jpg file with quality level 5 would result in a comparatively small Blob?

In practice, would it be worth saving the image in low resolution and converting it to a compressed format before inserting it into a Termbase?

Daniel

The size of the images may end up being a non-issue. So I have to correct myself (regarding what I said above). I have, for instance, a termbase with 26 images that occupy less than one megabyte (!) and the average dimensions of each are 500 x 500 pixels (attached below, the images used in their corresponding folder which, as I said before, once they're in your termbase you need not carry them with the termbase). On the other hand, images in a MultiTerm termbase are there for the sole purpose of illustrating a concept or term. So 'quality' considerations are perhaps irrelevant, which is not to say they don't look good. Images saved in a termbase as blob records will of course not be used for any other purpose.