I looked at the data and it sure enough starts with 'JFIF'. Of course I'm able to view the jpgs in any graphic editor that I tried. I even tried to 'save as...' another jpg in case the files were corrupted. I have tried dozens of jpgs all with the same result. None have worked so I doubt it's a problem with the files.

That's interesting that the 'starts with' translates into 'G:'. That is the drive that I'm pulling the images from and if I try pics from my H drive, the error changes to 0x48. So apparently, $q->upload('photo') returns the filename. So why does newFromGif() return an image, but not newFromJpeg() when the documentation describes them as similar functions?