Creating an image from excel spreadsheet data

Question

I have a spreadsheet representing 2D measurement data. Think of each cell's numeric value as a pixel intensity at (x,y) where x is the cell's column and y is the row. I would like to visualize the data by creating an image that would have at pixel (x,y) the corresponding cell value.

It would be even better if I could create an image with a rule that assigns certain colors to the ranges of cell values. Say, if the value at (x,y) os less than -0.5 the pixel should be red, between -0.5 and 0.5 it should be yellow, and above 0.5 it should be green, that kind of thing.

Thus the 1st question: is it possible to create such an image in Excel? The closest I've got was Conditional Formatting that colors the cells, but I'd like to get an actual image instead of colored cells.

If the above is impossible here's the 2nd question: is there a tool available to do the above from a CSV file? Exporting that Excel table into a CSV and running it through another tool to obtain an image would work just as well for me.

Answer 1

You COULD set up the Conditional Formatting to make the text color the same as the background color so that all you see for these cells would be the colors.

Then simply use the Snipping Tool from Windows, or anything similar to "snap" a shot of the region, then any editor of your choosing (GIMP is easy to use for easy things) to dress up the edges so no non-color shows, say, and micro-adjust the dimensions to make up for Excel only coming very approximately, but still "approximately", close to square cells (or any other rectangle you wish, it will still only get very close and a photo editor can get closer by stretching one dimension more than the other).

Save THAT as your file and you are good to go.

Low-tech, a bit manual, though not much.