Photos processed in Picasa often contain garbage data in the "MAKERNOTE" section and under EXIF.MakerNote, (UTF8) like:

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This can't be written to Blob in MySql. The following code removes the garbage tags.

$exif = exif_read_data($process_photo, 0, 'EXIF');

if($exif['IFD0']['Software'] == "Picasa"){

foreach ($exif as $key => $section){

 if($key != "MAKERNOTE"){
  foreach ($section as $name => $val){
   if($name != 'MakerNote'){
    $exifA[$key][$name] = $val;
   }
  }
  $exifB[$key] = $exifA[$key];
 }
}
$serialized_exif = serialize ($exifB);
}else{
$serialized_exif = serialize ($exif);
}