You would think this is a simple task: let's say you have a Crystal Report and you want to dynamically change an image in the report by loading an image from disk. Well, as it turns out, this functionality is not available in CR for .NET!

But here is a work-around; Crystal for .NET does support displaying images from a DB. And it does support accepting a disconnected ADO DataSet as a data source. So you can trick Crystal into thinking it loaded an image from disk and presto, you have dynamic images from disk. Here's the process:

(1) Create an XSD file (you'll use this as your report data source in step 2) with a binary column definition like so:

<xs:element name="AnImage" type="xs:base64Binary" minOccurs="0" />

(2) Create your Crystal Report and use an ADO.NET (XML) DataSource as your Crystal Report Data Source.

(3) Fill your DataSet, and then set the binary “image” column to an image file from disk using a MemoryStream like so:

Dim oLogo As System.Drawing.Image
Dim msX As New MemoryStream
Dim dsReportSource As New DataSet
' TODO: Fill your DataSet, dsReportSource, with your Report Data

(4) Load your Crystal Report and assign the Data Source as usual:

Dim oRpt As New ReportDocument
oRpt.Load("CrystalReport1.rpt")
oRpt.SetDataSource(DsTestImage1)
CrystalReportViewer1.ReportSource = oRpt