diff --git a/sentence_transformers/SentenceTransformer.py b/sentence_transformers/SentenceTransformer.py
index 80d6c9cbd..a73993e33 100644
--- a/sentence_transformers/SentenceTransformer.py
+++ b/sentence_transformers/SentenceTransformer.py
@@ -38,6 +38,7 @@
 from .models import Normalize, Pooling, Transformer
 from .quantization import quantize_embeddings
 from .util import (
+    ImageChannelDimension,
     batch_to_device,
     get_device_name,
     import_from_string,
@@ -382,6 +383,7 @@ def encode(
         convert_to_tensor: Literal[False] = ...,
         device: str = ...,
         normalize_embeddings: bool = ...,
+        image_channel_dimension: str = ImageChannelDimension.LAST,
         **kwargs,
     ) -> Tensor: ...
 
@@ -399,6 +401,7 @@ def encode(
         convert_to_tensor: Literal[False] = ...,
         device: str = ...,
         normalize_embeddings: bool = ...,
+        image_channel_dimension: str = ImageChannelDimension.LAST,
         **kwargs,
     ) -> np.ndarray: ...
 
@@ -416,6 +419,7 @@ def encode(
         convert_to_tensor: Literal[True] = ...,
         device: str = ...,
         normalize_embeddings: bool = ...,
+        image_channel_dimension: str = ImageChannelDimension.LAST,
         **kwargs,
     ) -> Tensor: ...
 
@@ -433,6 +437,7 @@ def encode(
         convert_to_tensor: Literal[False] = ...,
         device: str = ...,
         normalize_embeddings: bool = ...,
+        image_channel_dimension: str = ImageChannelDimension.LAST,
         **kwargs,
     ) -> list[Tensor]: ...
 
@@ -449,6 +454,7 @@ def encode(
         convert_to_tensor: bool = False,
         device: str = None,
         normalize_embeddings: bool = False,
+        image_channel_dimension: str = ImageChannelDimension.LAST,
         **kwargs,
     ) -> list[Tensor] | np.ndarray | Tensor:
         """
@@ -480,6 +486,8 @@ def encode(
             device (str, optional): Which :class:`torch.device` to use for the computation. Defaults to None.
             normalize_embeddings (bool, optional): Whether to normalize returned vectors to have length 1. In that case,
                 the faster dot-product (util.dot_score) instead of cosine similarity can be used. Defaults to False.
+            image_channel_dimension (str, optional): Indicate the color channel of an image to be the first or the last element of its shape.
+                If your image is 'ImageChannelDimension.FIRST', the input is required.
 
         Returns:
             Union[List[Tensor], ndarray, Tensor]: By default, a 2d numpy array with shape [num_inputs, output_dimension] is returned.
@@ -511,6 +519,9 @@ def encode(
             self.is_hpu_graph_enabled = True
 
         self.eval()
+        # Will be used in Image Tokenizer
+        self.image_channel_dimension = image_channel_dimension
+        
         if show_progress_bar is None:
             show_progress_bar = logger.getEffectiveLevel() in (logging.INFO, logging.DEBUG)
 
@@ -1021,7 +1032,7 @@ def tokenize(self, texts: list[str] | list[dict] | list[tuple[str, str]]) -> dic
             Dict[str, Tensor]: A dictionary of tensors with the tokenized texts. Common keys are "input_ids",
                 "attention_mask", and "token_type_ids".
         """
-        return self._first_module().tokenize(texts)
+        return self._first_module().tokenize(texts, image_channel_dimension=self.image_channel_dimension)
 
     def get_sentence_features(self, *features) -> dict[Literal["sentence_embedding"], torch.Tensor]:
         return self._first_module().get_sentence_features(*features)
diff --git a/sentence_transformers/models/CLIPModel.py b/sentence_transformers/models/CLIPModel.py
index 4eccb3c55..ff3442ef2 100644
--- a/sentence_transformers/models/CLIPModel.py
+++ b/sentence_transformers/models/CLIPModel.py
@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@
 import transformers
 from PIL import Image
 from torch import nn
+from ..util import ImageChannelDimension
 
 
 class CLIPModel(nn.Module):
@@ -51,10 +52,11 @@ def forward(self, features: dict[str, torch.Tensor]) -> dict[str, torch.Tensor]:
 
         return features
 
-    def tokenize(self, texts, padding: str | bool = True) -> dict[str, torch.Tensor]:
+    def tokenize(self, texts, padding: str | bool = True, **kwargs) -> dict[str, torch.Tensor]:
         images = []
         texts_values = []
         image_text_info = []
+        image_channel_dimension = kwargs.get("image_channel_dimension", ImageChannelDimension.LAST)
 
         for idx, data in enumerate(texts):
             if isinstance(data, Image.Image):  # An Image
@@ -69,7 +71,7 @@ def tokenize(self, texts, padding: str | bool = True) -> dict[str, torch.Tensor]
             encoding = self.processor.tokenizer(texts_values, return_tensors="pt", padding=padding)
 
         if len(images):
-            image_features = self.processor.image_processor(images, return_tensors="pt")
+            image_features = self.processor.image_processor(images, return_tensors="pt", input_data_format=image_channel_dimension)
             encoding["pixel_values"] = image_features.pixel_values
 
         encoding["image_text_info"] = image_text_info
diff --git a/sentence_transformers/models/Transformer.py b/sentence_transformers/models/Transformer.py
index ea66a13cb..449e00547 100644
--- a/sentence_transformers/models/Transformer.py
+++ b/sentence_transformers/models/Transformer.py
@@ -134,7 +134,7 @@ def get_word_embedding_dimension(self) -> int:
         return self.auto_model.config.hidden_size
 
     def tokenize(
-        self, texts: list[str] | list[dict] | list[tuple[str, str]], padding: str | bool = True
+        self, texts: list[str] | list[dict] | list[tuple[str, str]], padding: str | bool = True, **kwargs
     ) -> dict[str, torch.Tensor]:
         """Tokenizes a text and maps tokens to token-ids"""
         output = {}
diff --git a/sentence_transformers/util.py b/sentence_transformers/util.py
index 5b8baa5f7..b22fc4cf6 100644
--- a/sentence_transformers/util.py
+++ b/sentence_transformers/util.py
@@ -29,6 +29,12 @@
     from sentence_transformers.cross_encoder.CrossEncoder import CrossEncoder
     from sentence_transformers.SentenceTransformer import SentenceTransformer
 
+class ImageChannelDimension():
+    """
+    Defines the color channels' position in an Image's shape
+    """
+    FIRST = "channels_first"
+    LAST = "channels_last"
 
 def _convert_to_tensor(a: list | np.ndarray | Tensor) -> Tensor:
     """