PictureElement

Summary

Provides access to properties that enable its repositioning on the page layout as well as getting and setting its data source

Discussion

The PictureElement object represents a raster or image that has been inserted into a page layout. In addition to the standard element properties, the PictureElement is unique in that is has a sourceImage property that allows you to read or modify the source location. The ListLayoutElements function returns a Python list of page layout element objects. It is necessary to then iterate through each item in the list or specify an index number to reference a specific page element object. To return a list of only PictureElements, use the PICTURE_ELEMENT constant for the element_type parameter. A wild card can also be used to further refine the search based on the element name.

It is recommended that each page layout element be given a unique name so that it can be easily isolated using arcpy scripting. X and y element positions are based on the element's anchor position, which is set via the Size and Position tab on the Elements Properties dialog box in ArcMap.

Properties

Property	Explanation	Data Type
elementHeight (Read and Write)	The height of the element in page units. The units assigned or reported are in page units.	Double
elementPositionX (Read and Write)	The x location of the data frame element's anchor position. The units assigned or reported are in page units.	Double
elementPositionY (Read and Write)	The y location of the data frame element's anchor position. The units assigned or reported are in page units.	Double
elementWidth (Read and Write)	The width of the element in page units. The units assigned or reported are in page units.	Double
name (Read and Write)	The name of the element.	String
sourceImage (Read and Write)	A text string that represents the path to the image data source.	String
type (Read Only)	Returns the element type for any given page layout element. DATAFRAME_ELEMENT —Data frame element GRAPHIC_ELEMENT —Graphic element LEGEND_ELEMENT —Legend element MAPSURROUND_ELEMENT —Map surround element PICTURE_ELEMENT —Picture element TEXT_ELEMENT —Text element	String

Code Sample

PictureElement example

The following script will find an image by name and set its data source to a new location.

import arcpy
mxd = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument(r"C:\Project\Project.mxd")
for elm in arcpy.mapping.ListLayoutElements(mxd, "PICTURE_ELEMENT"):
    if elm.name == "Photo1":
        elm.sourceImage = r"C:\Project\Data\Photo.bmp"
mxd.save()
del mxd