Thanks to Matt W for suggesting two solutions!
As for the second suggestion, I tried passing the image (purple image wire) into the subvi and it ran just fine, but it never updated the image in the calling vi. If there is some way to tweak this to make it work, then this is probably the most elegant solution.
I tried the first suggestion, but I'm getting a compile error now, which is completely new for me! I'm attaching a pared down piece of my code that shows the compile error.
"Compile error. Report this problem to National Instruments Tech Support.
Control not in owning dco, ddo=0xB32544C"
Is it time to give up on references and use globals? I'm tempted to give up on subvis entirely and just combine everything into one huge vi!