# Can Elastic hold/store images? **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [July 15, 2019, 6:37pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/can-elastic-hold-store-images/190597 "2019-07-15T18:37:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![edster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/da6949/32.png) [@edster](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/edster)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2019, 6:37pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/can-elastic-hold-store-images/190597/1 "2019-07-15T18:37:08Z")
Is it possible for Elastic to store images? If so, are there only specific data types? Would they be processed or stored the same way all other data is stored i.e. index, type, docs, etc. ---
**Author:** ![dadoonet](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dadoonet/32/137187_2.png) [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2019, 7:32am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/can-elastic-hold-store-images/190597/2 "2019-07-16T07:32:45Z")
You can store images using the `binary` type. But I'd not store big images IMHO. See [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/binary.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/binary.html) ---
**Author:** ![edster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/da6949/32.png) [@edster](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/edster)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2019, 1:31pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/can-elastic-hold-store-images/190597/3 "2019-07-16T13:31:43Z")
At most, how big would you recommend the image size be? ---
**Author:** ![dadoonet](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dadoonet/32/137187_2.png) [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2019, 1:50pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/can-elastic-hold-store-images/190597/4 "2019-07-16T13:50:27Z")
Some kb at most. What is the use case? ---
**Author:** ![edster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/da6949/32.png) [@edster](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/edster)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2019, 4:18pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/can-elastic-hold-store-images/190597/5 "2019-07-16T16:18:18Z")
Ok right now at most the images seem to be png images sized about 50KB. They are to be linked with another index. But, I'm not sure if they should be a separate index or if they could be included in the planned linked index? ---
**Author:** ![dadoonet](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dadoonet/32/137187_2.png) [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2019, 5:42pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/can-elastic-hold-store-images/190597/6 "2019-07-16T17:42:21Z")
That should work. The question is still why do you want to store blobs in a search engine? ---
**Author:** ![edster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/da6949/32.png) [@edster](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/edster)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2019, 6:54pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/can-elastic-hold-store-images/190597/7 "2019-07-16T18:54:04Z")
We would like to have all the data together and synchronized. Rather than needing to connect to two or multiple sources we'd like to just have all together in one place and manage it like that. ---
**Author:** ![dadoonet](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dadoonet/32/137187_2.png) [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2019, 7:25pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/can-elastic-hold-store-images/190597/8 "2019-07-16T19:25:26Z")
Just keep in mind that storing a lot of unneeded data in Lucene segments might have a significant IO cost when segments will be merged (which is constantly happening behind the scene when you are indexing). ---
**Author:** ![edster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/da6949/32.png) [@edster](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/edster)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2019, 3:02pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/can-elastic-hold-store-images/190597/9 "2019-07-19T15:02:31Z")
Understood. Thank you for that information. That being said I am curious about Logstash as a service. After the initial pull of data. Does logstash run through each record and updates based on ID? Is this something that takes a long time because it goes through everything that has been pulled? ---
**Author:** ![dadoonet](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dadoonet/32/137187_2.png) [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2019, 3:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/can-elastic-hold-store-images/190597/10 "2019-07-19T15:03:54Z")
> [@edster](#): > > That being said I am curious about Logstash as a service. After the initial pull of data. Does logstash run through each record and updates based on ID? Is this something that takes a long time because it goes through everything that has been pulled? That's a totally unrelated question right? Could you open a new discussion in #logstash? ---
**Author:** ![edster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/da6949/32.png) [@edster](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/edster)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2019, 3:06pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/can-elastic-hold-store-images/190597/11 "2019-07-19T15:06:14Z")
Ok yeah haha I figured it might be too off. No worries will open a new discussion thank you. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2019, 3:06pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/can-elastic-hold-store-images/190597/12 "2019-08-16T15:06:15Z")
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