Currently aspect ration is not preserved for any of the handles of an image when using the photo layout editor. Perhaps aspect ratio can be preserved when a user drags a corner handle on the image. Thank you!
I've encountered the same bug. The XML file contains contains an element like this: '<g transform="translate(60.9289,-51.9289) matrix(1,0,0,1,0,0)">'. So it appears that the bug is in the import routine.