[solved] accessing images in the view (strange behaviour)

[eluser]BrianDHall[/eluser]
Your problem is with file_exists(): http://php.net/manual/en/function.file-exists.php

It expects a relative path to the file on your system, not an HTTP:// style url - which is what base_url is giving you.

I believe you can try getting rid of the base_url portion and just feed it the image path of img/image.jpg, as it is all relative to the front-controller index.php file unless specified otherwise.