use MIME::Base64;
use strict;
use warnings;

my $upload_dir = 'uploaded_files';
my $file = 'image.jpg';
my $base64_a = '';

### Open the image to convert to base64
open (IMAGE, "$upload_dir/$file") or die "$!";
binmode IMAGE;
my $binary = do{ local $/ = undef; <IMAGE>; };
binmode $binary;

$base64_a = encode_base64($binary); 
my $base64 = encode_base64(pack('B*', $binary));
	
print "base64 = $base64\n";