Pictctrl bug? (not saving/loading the image)

Hi, I'm running into some strange behaviour from pictctrl

The image file is in a subfolder, and when loading it in inspector, closing and re-opening the patch I get a "can't find file" error.

I'm sending "read" with an absolute file path at loadbang, still get the error (with just the filename, not the whole path) but the file appears if I move the object in unlocked mode and click on the background.

any thoughts as to what might be happening?

many thanks