Paul, that's exactly the problem I'm having. Though at times I can open a pic just fine and others won't open at all. Size doesn't seem to matter much, as one run I can open one, and on another run I can't.

I get an error when the code tries to release the TPicture instance after I draw its TGraphic onto my temp PNG in LoadFrom. It just doesn't make any sense as the same code in another application works just fine.

I'm beginning to wonder if this has something to do with the frames and a memory problem. Guess I should try it without the frames and see what happens.

Legolas, I've tried that. Problem is the error comes from so deep in the system that the lazarus debugger only shows me the assembly window. A call stack trace shows no known lines of code. I've tried stepping down with F7 to the problem but it moves every few runs. I'm leaning more and more towards memory leak or problem with frames.