That works just fine. I personally would have done the template or single value column, but there is nothing wrong with how you did it. If you wanted, you could do the same with the actual image. The more you can do to make everything data driven through the sheet, the easier it is to maintain if you ever want to make changes without having to open the glide editor. There are plenty of options to achieve it. You also can use the rich text markdown component to build an image link with markdown, but the way you did it is better.
As for extra space, try the empty character method.