iMac (and MacBook) automatically jutting to parent folder

[meowkie]

Hi. I sincerely apologize if this is in the wrong category, I'm at my wits end here. As a designer I do a lot of saving and exporting into many folders. About a year ago I started noticing that when my save/export box pops up, it often automatically redirects me all the way back to the original folder (Pictures). Sometimes this means I need to sift through several folders to get back to where I originally opened my file, in order to save over changes in the correct folder. Not the end of the world, but kind of annoying. 10x more annoying, however, is that using the pull-down menu to select Recent Places, which will have the folder I'm working from visible, ALSO automatically throws me back to my primary folder (Pictures). So it seems I can't use shortcuts at all to pilot through my folders - I have to manually work my way through to where I was each time. It's making it extremely time-consuming to save multiple versions of the same image (multiple colour-ways on a logo for example).

This problem was originally on my MacBook Pro, but upon setting up my iMac and backing up from the MacBook via Time Machine, the exact same issue has carried over, so it must be some sort of setting I have selected, but after a year I've given up looking for what I could have possibly arranged and could really use advice on how to fix it. It seems like a minor issue but the lost time seriously adds up and it's driving me mental.

Thanks in advance for any help!

*had to make edits as i'm dum and wasn't using the term parent folder properly.