What I described was the way it used to work, according to DrO. Maybe he said it worked that way when more than 1 image was embedded in a file. The discussion of this was several years ago. Anyway, it's possible changes were made in more recent versions.
I remember there was a plug-in years ago that allowed the user to select the embedded image that was displayed or rotate among all the embedded images in a file. I miss that plug-in.