saving temporary image to database

Hi there, I would like to save a jpg into a blob field of mysql. The function underneath works fine if I read the image from the temporary destination where php did put it after uploading. My problem is, that I would like to do some funky stuff to the image like changing colors or adding watermarks. So I have several functions ahead before I used to store them successfully to the file system. Now I would like to store it to a blob field, but this does not work. Like I said it works to store the temp file, but not the other one. I guess it has to do with something regarding the imagejpeg function. Here is what I tryed: ######################################### # save image to db into blob // this does not work (outputImg is a the colorcorrected file) $data = addslashes($outputImg); // this one would work # $data = addslashes(fread(fopen($picture_location, "r"), filesize($picture_location))); $stmt =" INSERT INTO test.picture_test (file_name, file_type, picture) VALUES ('$name', '$picture_location_type', '$data') "; execute_stmt($stmt, $link); ######################################### Maybe some of you guy has a good idea on that. Thanx for any help, Andy