llava

# LLaVA - Large Language and Vision Assistant Open-source vision-language model for conversational image understanding. ## When to use LLaVA **Use when:** - Building vision-language chatbots - Visual question answering (VQA) - Image description and captioning - Multi-turn image conversations - Visual instruction following - Document understanding with images **Metrics**: - **23,000+ GitHub stars** - GPT-4V level capabilities (targeted) - Apache 2.0 License - Multiple model sizes (7B-34B params) **Use alternatives instead**: - **GPT-4V**: Highest quality, API-based - **CLIP**: Simple zero-shot classification - **BLIP-2**: Better for captioning only - **Flamingo**: Research, not open-source ## Quick start ### Installation ```bash # Clone repository git clone https://github.com/haotian-liu/LLaVA cd LLaVA # Install pip install -e . ``` ### Basic usage ```python from llava.model.builder import load_pretrained_model from llava.mm_utils import get_model_name_from_path, process_images, tokenizer_image_token from llava.constants import IMAGE_TOKEN_INDEX, DEFAULT_IMAGE_TOKEN from llava.conversation import conv_templates from PIL import Image import torch # Load model model_path = "liuhaotian/llava-v1.5-7b" tokenizer, model, image_processor, context_len = load_pretrained_model( model_path=model_path, model_base=None, model_name=get_model_name_from_path(model_path) ) # Load image image = Image.open("image.jpg") image_tensor = process_images([image], image_processor, model.config) image_tensor = image_tensor.to(model.device, dtype=torch.float16) # Create conversation conv = conv_templates["llava_v1"].copy() conv.append_message(conv.roles[0], DEFAULT_IMAGE_TOKEN + "\nWhat is in this image?") conv.append_message(conv.roles[1], None) prompt = conv.get_prompt() # Generate response input_ids = tokenizer_image_token(prompt, tokenizer, IMAGE_TOKEN_INDEX, return_tensors='pt').unsqueeze(0).to(model.device) with torch.inference_mode(): output_ids = model.generate( input_ids, images=image_tensor, do_sample=True, temperature=0.2, max_new_tokens=512 ) response = tokenizer.decode(output_ids[0], skip_special_tokens=True).strip() print(response) ``` ## Available models | Model | Parameters | VRAM | Quality | |-------|------------|------|---------| | LLaVA-v1.5-7B | 7B | ~14 GB | Good | | LLaVA-v1.5-13B | 13B | ~28 GB | Better | | LLaVA-v1.6-34B | 34B | ~70 GB | Best | ```python # Load different models model_7b = "liuhaotian/llava-v1.5-7b" model_13b = "liuhaotian/llava-v1.5-13b" model_34b = "liuhaotian/llava-v1.6-34b" # 4-bit quantization for lower VRAM load_4bit = True # Reduces VRAM by ~4× ``` ## CLI usage ```bash # Single image query python -m llava.serve.cli \ --model-path liuhaotian/llava-v1.5-7b \ --image-file image.jpg \ --query "What is in this image?" # Multi-turn conversation python -m llava.serve.cli \ --model-path liuhaotian/llava-v1.5-7b \ --image-file image.jpg # Then type questions interactively ``` ## Web UI (Gradio) ```bash # Launch Gradio interface python -m llava.serve.gradio_web_server \ --model-path liuhaotian/llava-v1.5-7b \ --load-4bit # Optional: reduce VRAM # Access at http://localhost:7860 ``` ## Multi-turn conversations ```python # Initialize conversation conv = conv_templates["llava_v1"].copy() # Turn 1 conv.append_message(conv.roles[0], DEFAULT_IMAGE_TOKEN + "\nWhat is in this image?") conv.append_message(conv.roles[1], None) response1 = generate(conv, model, image) # "A dog playing in a park" # Turn 2 conv.messages[-1][1] = response1 # Add previous response conv.append_message(conv.roles[0], "What breed is the dog?") conv.append_message(conv.roles[1], None) response2 = generate(conv, model, image) # "Golden Retriever" # Turn 3 conv.messages[-1][1] = response2 conv.append_message(conv.roles[0], "What time of day is it?") conv.append_message(conv.roles[1], None) response3 = generate(conv, model, image) ``` ## Common tasks ### Image captioning ```python question = "Describe this image in detail." response = ask(model, image, question) ``` ### Visual question answering ```python question = "How many people are in the image?" response = ask(model, image, question) ``` ### Object detection (textual) ```python question = "List all the objects you can see in this image." response = ask(model, image, question) ``` ### Scene understanding ```python question = "What is happening in this scene?" response = ask(model, image, question) ``` ### Document understanding ```python question = "What is the main topic of this document?" response = ask(model, document_image, question) ``` ## Training custom model ```bash # Stage 1: Feature alignment (558K image-caption pairs) bash scripts/v1_5/pretrain.sh # Stage 2: Visual instruction tuning (150K instruction data) bash scripts/v1_5/finetune.sh ``` ## Quantization (reduce VRAM) ```python # 4-bit quantization tokenizer, model, image_processor, context_len = load_pretrained_model( model_path="liuhaotian/llava-v1.5-13b", model_base=None, model_name=get_model_name_from_path("liuhaotian/llava-v1.5-13b"), load_4bit=True # Reduces VRAM ~4× ) # 8-bit quantization load_8bit=True # Reduces VRAM ~2× ``` ## Best practices 1. **Start with 7B model** - Good quality, manageable VRAM 2. **Use 4-bit quantization** - Reduces VRAM significantly 3. **GPU required** - CPU inference extremely slow 4. **Clear prompts** - Specific questions get better answers 5. **Multi-turn conversations** - Maintain conversation context 6. **Temperature 0.2-0.7** - Balance creativity/consistency 7. **max_new_tokens 512-1024** - For detailed responses 8. **Batch processing** - Process multiple images sequentially ## Performance | Model | VRAM (FP16) | VRAM (4-bit) | Speed (tokens/s) | |-------|-------------|--------------|------------------| | 7B | ~14 GB | ~4 GB | ~20 | | 13B | ~28 GB | ~8 GB | ~12 | | 34B | ~70 GB | ~18 GB | ~5 | *On A100 GPU* ## Benchmarks LLaVA achieves competitive scores on: - **VQAv2**: 78.5% - **GQA**: 62.0% - **MM-Vet**: 35.4% - **MMBench**: 64.3% ## Limitations 1. **Hallucinations** - May describe things not in image 2. **Spatial reasoning** - Struggles with precise locations 3. **Small text** - Difficulty reading fine print 4. **Object counting** - Imprecise for many objects 5. **VRAM requirements** - Need powerful GPU 6. **Inference speed** - Slower than CLIP ## Integration with frameworks ### LangChain ```python from langchain.llms.base import LLM class LLaVALLM(LLM): def _call(self, prompt, stop=None): # Custom LLaVA inference return response llm = LLaVALLM() ``` ### Gradio App ```python import gradio as gr def chat(image, text, history): response = ask_llava(model, image, text) return response demo = gr.ChatInterface( chat, additional_inputs=[gr.Image(type="pil")], title="LLaVA Chat" ) demo.launch() ``` ## Resources - **GitHub**: https://github.com/haotian-liu/LLaVA ⭐ 23,000+ - **Paper**: https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.08485 - **Demo**: https://llava.hliu.cc - **Models**: https://huggingface.co/liuhaotian - **License**: Apache 2.0 --- > Converted and distributed by [TomeVault](https://tomevault.io) | [Claim this content](https://tomevault.io/claim/davila7/claude-code-templates) <!-- tomevault:2.0:skill_md:2026-04-05 -->