Multimodal prompting

Multimodal prompting is the practice of combining text instructions with one or more images (or other visual media) in a single prompt sent to Claude. Instead of describing a visual problem in words, you show Claude the actual image—a chart, screenshot, scanned document, diagram, or photograph—alongside your question or instruction, and Claude reasons across both modalities simultaneously to produce a text or code response. Claude's vision capability is built into all current Claude 3.x and 4.x models. You can send images via the claude.ai web interface (drag-and-drop or file attachment), via the Console Workbench, or programmatically through the API using one of three methods: a direct image URL, a base64-encoded image embedded in the request body, or a reusable file ID obtained from the Files API (beta). The model processes the visual content and text together, so context from both sources informs the response. Multimodal prompting expands what Claude can help with: reading text from imperfect scans, interpreting charts and dashboards, comparing multiple design mockups, converting UI screenshots into code, and running extended multi-turn visual reasoning conversations. Because images consume tokens, resolution, format, and quantity choices affect both accuracy and cost, making prompt structure and image quality important variables to manage.