Get file or image path as string from uid I need to get the relative path to a file, in this case, what i need is: 

/sites/default/files/pics/DSC00873_39.JPG

But all I seem to be able to get is the following: 

$file = file_load($pic);
print $file-&gt;uri; // public://pics/DSC00873_39.JPG 


Any ideas please?
Yep. There is a function for that.

http://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/includes%21file.inc/function/file_create_url/7