This will allow you to manipulate the thumbnail image ($imgJpeg) using the various gd commands:

<?php
  if (($imgJpeg = exif_thumbnail($strImagePath)) === false)
    print "No Thumbnail!";
  else
    $imgJpeg = imageCreateFromString($imgJpeg);
?>

If you've edited the image with image editing software and it no longer contains an exif thumbnail, I've created a script that will add one back into it, using the "PHP Exif Library": http://pel.sourceforge.net/index.php

<?php
require_once('../PEL/PelJpeg.php');
require_once('../PEL/PelIfd.php');
$fullpath = 'images/DSC_0013c.JPG';  # path of source image (does not contain an exif thumbnail)
      
$jpeg = new PelJpeg($fullpath);
 $exif = $jpeg->getExif();
 $tiff = $exif->getTiff();
 $ifd0 = $tiff->getIfd();        # need this so that we can later link it to the new IFD 

 $ifd1 = $ifd0->getNextIfd();
if (!$ifd1) {        # Only create thumbnail if one doesn't exist (i.e. there is no IFD1)
    $ifd1 = new PelIfd(1);
    $ifd0->setNextIfd($ifd1); # point ifd0 to the new ifd1 (or else ifd1 will not be read)

    $original = ImageCreateFromString($jpeg->getBytes()); # create image resource of original
    $orig_w=imagesx($original);
    $orig_h=imagesy($original);
    $wmax = 160;
    $hmax = 120;

    if ($orig_w>$wmax || $orig_h>$hmax) {
        $thumb_w=$wmax;
        $thumb_h=$hmax;
        if ($thumb_w/$orig_w*$orig_h>$thumb_h)
            $thumb_w=round($thumb_h*$orig_w/$orig_h); # maintain aspect ratio
        else
            $thumb_h=round($thumb_w*$orig_h/$orig_w);
    }
    else { # only set the thumb's size if the original is larger than 'wmax'x'hmax'
        $thumb_w=$orig_w;
        $thumb_h=$orig_h;
    }

        # create image resource with thumbnail sizing
    $thumb=imagecreatetruecolor($thumb_w,$thumb_h); 
        ## Resize original and copy to the blank thumb resource
    imagecopyresampled($thumb,$original,
                               0,0,0,0,$thumb_w,$thumb_h,$orig_w,$orig_h);

        # start writing output to buffer
    ob_start();        
        # outputs thumb resource contents to buffer
    ImageJpeg($thumb);    
        # create PelDataWindow from buffer thumb contents (and end output to buffer)
    $window = new PelDataWindow(ob_get_clean()); 

    if ($window) {    

        $ifd1->setThumbnail($window); # set window data as thumbnail in ifd1
        $outpath = $fullpath; # overwrite original jpg file
        file_put_contents($outpath, $jpeg->getBytes()); # write everything to output filename
            # Show thumbnail in file:
        echo '<img src="thumb_exif.php?image='.$outpath.'" border=0 alt="If you see this, it did not work"><br>';

        
    }
}
else {
    echo 'ifd1 already exists! (IFD1 is where the thumbnail is stored)<br>';
}
?>
<?php # This is the code in thumb_exif.php :
        $imgdat = exif_thumbnail($_REQUEST['image'], $width, $height, $type);
        header('Content-type: ' . image_type_to_mime_type($type));
        echo($imgdat);
?>

If you have a lot of such files, you can easily make a script that searches them out and adds thumbnails to their exif.

use this if you want to embed a thumbnail directly on the HTML page without writing it first to a file:

<?php
$image = exif_thumbnail($file, $width, $height, $type);

echo "<img  width='$width' height='$height' src='data:image/gif;base64,".base64_encode($image)."'>";
?>

If you want to convert from TIFF to JPG you can use ImageMagick if it is installed in your server.

<?php
$exec = 'convert /path/to/file.tiff /path/to/file.jpg 2>&1';
@exec($exec, $exec_output, $exec_retval);

//possible error
print_r($exec_output)
?>

Great that the thumbnail can be in TIFF format (f.i. Kodak cameras have embedded thumbnail in TIFF) BUT I have not been able to show TIFF as an embedded image in HTML (using the <IMG...> tag). There seems to be no function in PHP to change TIFF to, lets say, JPG. (imagecreatefromstring gives a 'unknown datatype' error for the TIFF stream. So below sample works great for JPEG embedded thumbnail, but not for TIFF embedded (but then, maybe I did something wrong?):

test_exif.php:

<HTML>
<HEAD>
    <TITLE>Test EXIF Read  </TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<?php
$image='P0000614.JPG';
echo("<B>". $image. "</B>:<BR><BR>\n");

$exif = exif_read_data($image, 'ANY_TAG',true);
if (!$exif===false)
{
    echo("Image contains headers<br><br>");
    echo("<A href=showthumb.php?image=" . $image ."> <IMG border=0 src=showthumb.php?image=" . $image ."></A><BR><BR>");

    foreach ($exif as $key => $section) 
    {
        foreach ($section as $name => $val) 
        {
            echo "$key.$name: $val<br>\n";
        }
    }
}
else
{
    echo("Sorry, image <B>".$image . "</B> does not contain (readable) EXIF data.");
}
?>
</BODY>
</HTML>

showthumb.php:

<?php
$imgdat = exif_thumbnail($_REQUEST['image'],$width, $height, $type);
header('Content-type: ' . image_type_to_mime_type($type));
echo($imgdat);
?>

When clicking on the <A> opens the TIFF image in the program that windows assigned to this type, but the JPEG opens in the browser.

I am using PHP 4.3.6 on windows iis 4 (yeah, I know.....)