What’s up, everyone? If you've been even remotely tuned into the world of AI, you know that things are moving at a breakneck pace. It feels like every other week there's a new model that's blowing everyone's minds. But here's the thing: a lot of the really powerful stuff, especially when it comes to vision models that can "see" & interpret images, has been locked away behind expensive APIs. That's starting to change, & it's changing in a BIG way.

Turns out, you can now run some seriously impressive vision models right on your own machine. We're talking about models that can look at a picture & tell you what's in it, answer questions about it, even read text from it. It's the kind of stuff that used to be sci-fi, but now it's just... software you can download. Pretty cool, right?

Two of the most popular tools making this happen are Ollama & LM Studio. They both let you download & run large language models locally, but they go about it in slightly different ways. I’ve been getting my hands dirty with both, & honestly, it’s a game-changer. So, I figured I’d put together a detailed, step-by-step guide to help you get started. Whether you're a developer, a researcher, or just a curious enthusiast, this is for you.

We're going to go deep on this, so grab a coffee & get ready to level up your AI game.

Ollama has been a fan favorite for a while now because of its simplicity. It’s a no-fuss way to get powerful models running from your terminal. Recently, they've added support for some incredible vision models, which has opened up a whole new world of possibilities. Let's walk through how to get it all set up.

First things first, you need to have Ollama on your system. If you've already been playing with text-based models, you can probably skip this part, but you SHOULD make sure you have the latest version to get vision model support. The team has been updating it frequently.

Head over to the Ollama website & grab the download for your operating system (macOS, Windows, or Linux). The installation is super straightforward. Just run the installer, & it'll set everything up for you.

To make sure it's working, open up your terminal or command prompt & type: