Desktop Grid

I've searched, but there don't appear to be specific answers to an irritating aspect of Snow Leopard desktop behaviour.

If I drag images from, for example, Image Capture to the desktop, and place them exactly where I want them, the images immediately jump to the RH side of the d/top and position themselves in an available space when I release the mouse button. Then comes the task of finding where the images have gone.

I've looked through Sys Prefs, View Options and Finder Prefs, but there's nothing I can see that will change the desktop presets.

Any known solutions? Thanks.

I don't know if it's the same issue, and forgive me but I'm using Lion...

But what happens if you right click on the desktop and navigate to the "Sort by" menu?

Is "snap to grid" checked?! Only asking because when I move objects around with that checked then they move to a conformed position on the screen. Whereas when I turn that off, they stay where I put them.

Of course, I could be way out of leftfield with this. Apologies if I am.

No apology necessary, thanks for your response.

Snap to grid is not checked, I remember learning about that one way back in the days of OS 9.

Arranging by name does precisely that (ie. alphabetically), and the other available arrangement options don't overcome the issue of the positioning of icons. It appears to be a quirk of either SLpd or of Image Capture, unless I'm missing something - which is quite on the cards!

Something I failed to mention in my original post was that if I highlight a web link in a browser and drag it to the desktop, it stays where I put it. Which tends to point to IC as the culprit. Will do more investigating.