When you clip and paste an image - however large or small - into a note, the note gets formatted and it seems that several tables and cells are created automatically. The problem arises when the note becomes too long, due to the tables and cells, to save and close. For anyone who doesn't use Google Notebook, it's hard to explain. But I suspect that anyone who uses Notebook will know what I'm talking about. And since Google has stopped developing Notebook, there's nowhere to go for tech support for this issue (I've looked just about everywhere)...
maybe you are not copy the image, instead a batch of HTML code that has tables etc and looks like just a image
The thing is, the formatting also happens when a little SiteAdvisor check-mark icon attaches to a link...