>I've identified that VFP stores the filename in the Picture property and only returns this. What I wanted was for VFP to return the image so that I can put this into another image control. Using the DLL as an image store.
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>I've worked around this by having a class library of image controls (one for each image) in another exe. Then I can use NewObject to create an instance of the image control (with NewObject you can specify application name that contains the object). I'm going to have a client-specific exe for each client anyway so can use this.

In that case, why not use a combination of LoadPicture and SavePicture. While I haven't tested this, you could call a method of the DLL that returned the result of LoadPicture. In the application that called the method, you could use SavePicture to create a temporary file on disk and use that in your image control.

Just a thought.