Laravel 5 Intervention make base64 blob from POST API unable to init from given binary data

I'm sorry, it may be a couple issues and not sure how to phrase the question properly. OK, tried a number of solutions over 2 days to no avail...thank you in advance for your help!

A photo is sent from an iPad app using POST API in the format of base64 (no meta data, just the base64 blob). I'm trying to simply decode and save locally.

I'm testing using Postman:

...com/api/register?first_name=John&photo=/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQAB...[base 64 image of about 400kb]

In Laravel, I am using Intervention

$jpg_url = "image-".time().".jpg";
$path = "/public/".$jpg_url;
$base=base64_decode($customer['photo']);
Image::make($base)->save($path);

and getting an "Unable to init from given binary data" error.

Here's what I don't quite understand and would appreciate a TIL5 explanation: - When I save the POST from iPad directly into the DB with the following:

$photo = $customer->photo = $customer['photo']

The blob in mysql looks good, I can manually copy and paste it to a web decoder fine.

However, when I use postman, $photo has "+" in the base64 changed into spaces and the image doesn't render

Is this a datatype issue? I'm receiving a long blob that is trying to be converted into string? What is the best practice of receiving images from a mobile app?

via Chebli Mohamed