# Step 4: Customizing Vector Stores

## How to Customize Deep Lake Vector Stores for Images, Multi-Embedding Applications, and More.

Under-the-hood, Deep Lake vector stores use the Deep Lake tabular format, where `Tensors` are conceptually equivalent to columns. A unique feature in Deep Lake is that Tensors can be customized to a variety of use-cases beyond simple embeddings of text.

### Creating vector stores with non-text data

To create a Vector Store for images, we should write a custom embedding function that embeds images from a file using a neural network, since we cannot use OpenAI for embedding images yet.

```python
import os
import torch
from torchvision import transforms, models
from torchvision.models.feature_extraction import create_feature_extractor
from PIL import Image

model = models.resnet18(pretrained=True)

return_nodes = {
    "avgpool": "embedding"
}
model = create_feature_extractor(model, return_nodes=return_nodes)

model.eval()
model.to("cpu")
```

```python
tform = transforms.Compose([
    transforms.Resize((224,224)), 
    transforms.ToTensor(),
    transforms.Lambda(lambda x: torch.cat([x, x, x], dim=0) if x.shape[0] == 1 else x),
    transforms.Normalize([0.485, 0.456, 0.406], [0.229, 0.224, 0.225]),
])

def embedding_function(images, model = model, transform = tform, batch_size = 4):
    """Creates a list of embeddings based on a list of image filenames. Images are processed in batches."""

    if isinstance(images, str):
        images = [images]

    #Proceess the embeddings in batches, but return everything as a single list
    embeddings = []
    for i in range(0, len(images), batch_size):
        batch = torch.stack([transform(Image.open(item)) for item in images[i:i+batch_size]])
        batch = batch.to("cpu")
        with torch.no_grad():
            embeddings+= model(batch)['embedding'][:,:,0,0].cpu().numpy().tolist()

    return embeddings
```

Lets download and unzip 6 example images with common objects and create a list of containing their filenames.

{% file src="<https://content.gitbook.com/content/NarYgplYsWUwWA0iaflm/blobs/xTm9OKUF66KB4AANpaUD/common_objects.zip>" %}

```python
data_folder = '/Users/istranic/ActiveloopCode/Datasets/common_objects'

image_fns = [os.path.join(data_folder, file) for file in os.listdir(data_folder) if os.path.splitext(file)[-1]=='.jpg']
```

Earlier in this tutorial, we did not specify any data-structure-related information when initializing the Vector Store, which by default creates a vector store with tensors for `text`, `metadata`, `id (auto-populated)`, and `embedding`. &#x20;

Here, we create a Vector Store for image similarity search, which should contains tensors for the `image`, its `embedding`, and the `filename` for the image. This can be achieved by specifying custom `tensor_params`.

```python
vector_store_path = '/vector_store_getting_started_images"

vector_store = VectorStore(
    path = vector_store_path,
    tensor_params = [{'name': 'image', 'htype': 'image', 'sample_compression': 'jpg'}, 
                     {'name': 'embedding', 'htype': 'embedding'}, 
                     {'name': 'filename', 'htype': 'text'}],
)
```

We add data to the Vector Store just as if we were adding text data earlier in the Getting Started Guide.

```python
vector_store.add(image = image_fns,
                 filename = image_fns,
                 embedding_function = embedding_function, 
                 embedding_data = image_fns)
```

#### Performing image similarity search

Let's find the image in the Vector Store that is most similar to the reference image below.

<figure><img src="https://content.gitbook.com/content/NarYgplYsWUwWA0iaflm/blobs/wWhZVZX4F8B9OZsE9IGq/reference_image.jpg" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

{% file src="<https://content.gitbook.com/content/NarYgplYsWUwWA0iaflm/blobs/wWhZVZX4F8B9OZsE9IGq/reference_image.jpg>" %}

```python
image_path = '/reference_image.jpg'

result = vector_store.search(embedding_data = [image_path], embedding_function = embedding_function)
```

We can display the result of the most similar image, which shows a picture of a yellow Lamborghini, which is fairly similar to the black Porsche above.&#x20;

```python
Image.fromarray(result['image'][0])
```

<figure><img src="https://content.gitbook.com/content/NarYgplYsWUwWA0iaflm/blobs/QdpQ0SoEM3lcRihxDMgv/image_2.jpg" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

### Creating Vector Stores with multiple embeddings

COMING SOON


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