MMP-Intra was recently proposed as a recurrent patterns based image encoder that combines the multidimensional multiscale parser (MMP) algorithm with intra prediction techniques. Our results show that this method is able to achieve considerable gains over state-of-the-art transform-based image encoders for a wide variety of types of images, like text, composed (text and graphics) and texture images, while having performance close to the one of traditional algorithms for smooth images. Because of this universal character, MMP-Intra can be regarded as a viable alternative to transform-based image coding. MMP-Intra uses a multiscale adaptive dictionary to approximate the original data blocks. It is composed of dilations, contractions and concatenations of previously encoded patterns. In this work we present a new method for controlling the dictionary adaptability, in which the dictionary is only updated if a certain distortion criterion is met in the block being encoded. Experimental results show that this scheme is able to consistently outperform the original method, while achieving relevant reductions in its computational complexity