Yes, Claude can read images: you can give it a photo, screenshot, chart or scanned page and it will describe, analyze or pull text from it. Claude only understands images; it cannot generate or edit them.
As of November 14, 2026, according to Anthropic’s Claude vision documentation:
- Where: on claude.ai, upload an image like a file or drag it into the chat. Developers can send images through the Claude API or the Console Playground.
- Formats: JPEG, PNG, GIF and WebP. For animated images, only the first frame is used.
- Limits: up to 20 images per message and 10 MB per image on claude.ai. The API allows up to 600 images per request (100 for models with a 200k-token context window), 10 MB per image and 8000×8000 pixels per image.
- PDFs: Claude can also read pictures, charts and tables inside PDFs.
- Limitations: Claude will not name people in images, does not read image metadata, and can make mistakes with low-quality, rotated or very small images.
Related: What is the Claude file upload limit?, Can Claude generate images? and Claude Fable 5.2: Power-User Guide
Source: Claude Docs, Vision and Claude Docs, PDF support
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