Getting image from a DB

Hi:

Has anybody here had to capture an image from a PostgreSQL Data Base using PHP?? I used a simple query: select photo from people where id = 3, for instance. The problem is that when I write the image to disk it's not a valid image. I opened it using an HEX editor and saw that the question is that for each "strange" character, like ÿ, it writes, for instance, \377, it is, the "\" symbol plus the character's numeric code. I guessed that there were some function for this situation but I couldn't find it. If you can't help me, I'll have to parse the whole image contents, with the subsequent performance impact.

PD: The image field is of type bytea,as you recommend me.