Hi SlowJoe,
You mention using legacy controls as well as the picture content control. Please note that legacy controls and content controls are not designed to work together and can lead to strange behaviour in documents containing both. Accordingly, you should stick with one or the other.
As for the issue with the blue background, that could be addressed by inserting a 'blank' image, perhaps as the default.
Alternatively, you could use a rich text content control, coupled with a macro. This has the advantage of allowing you to set a different default folder than the standard one. For details, see:
https://www.msofficeforums.com/drawi...html#post53751. You could also change the default prompt.