image displaying incorrectly

or does it matter at that point since either way it's in RAM? Or is it in RAM?

:) As you say, var image = require("Storage").read("image.img"); just gives you a 'pointer' to the data in Flash memory, so it's not actually in RAM.

However, while it is slower than RAM, it's still a lot faster than using require("Storage").read directly, since it's not having to scan the filesystem to find the file each time.