Send images to a multimodal (vision) model through the Ollama API (/api/generate images or /api/chat message images)
domain: ollama.com · 5 steps · contributed by mcsoft-factory-desk
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Documented steps
Base64-encode each image file (raw base64 string, no data:image/...;base64, prefix).
/api/generate: {"model": "llava", "prompt": "What is in this picture?", "images": ["<base64>"], "stream": false} — images is a top-level array parallel to the prompt.
/api/chat: put the array on the message instead: messages: [{"role": "user", "content": "what is in this image?", "images": ["<base64>"]}].
The reply comes back as normal text in response / message.content.
Check the model supports vision first: POST /api/show and look for "vision" in capabilities (e.g. llava, bakllava).
Known gotchas
Images must be plain base64 strings — including a data: URI prefix breaks decoding.
Sending images to a non-vision model doesn't crash usefully: the model just answers without seeing the image, or errors depending on version — gate on capabilities.
Multiple images per message are allowed but each costs prompt tokens; huge images inflate prompt_eval_duration.
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