Vision - Ollama — ContextQMD

Vision models accept images alongside text so the model can describe, classify, and answer questions about what it sees.

Quick start

shell

ollama run gemma3 ./image.png whats in this image?

Usage with Ollama's API

Provide an images array. SDKs accept file paths, URLs or raw bytes while the REST API expects base64-encoded image data.

<Tabs> <Tab title="cURL"> ```shell # 1. Download a sample image curl -L -o test.jpg "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Cat03.jpg"

# 2. Encode the image
IMG=$(base64 < test.jpg | tr -d '\n')

# 3. Send it to Ollama
curl -X POST http://localhost:11434/api/chat \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
    "model": "gemma3",
    "messages": [{
    "role": "user",
    "content": "What is in this image?",
    "images": ["'"$IMG"'"]
    }],
    "stream": false
}'
```

</Tab> <Tab title="Python"> ```python from ollama import chat # from pathlib import Path

# Pass in the path to the image
path = input('Please enter the path to the image: ')

# You can also pass in base64 encoded image data
# img = base64.b64encode(Path(path).read_bytes()).decode()
# or the raw bytes
# img = Path(path).read_bytes()

response = chat(
  model='gemma3',
  messages=[
    {
      'role': 'user',
      'content': 'What is in this image? Be concise.',
      'images': [path],
    }
  ],
)

print(response.message.content)
```

</Tab> <Tab title="JavaScript"> ```javascript import ollama from 'ollama'

const imagePath = '/absolute/path/to/image.jpg'
const response = await ollama.chat({
  model: 'gemma3',
  messages: [
    { role: 'user', content: 'What is in this image?', images: [imagePath] }
  ],
  stream: false,
})

console.log(response.message.content)
```

</Tab> </Tabs>