Problems with Inkscape. HELP!

[kwedding]

I'm a newbie and am having problems with Inkscape. I have read all the tutorials and watched the videos, but none of them help me. I import the .jpg graphic from PC Crafter and choose view<outline and either my picture disappears altogether or it goes to plain b/w. Then I choose path<trace bitmap. That is where the problem comes in. The box shows up but in the preview box, there's no picture and I hit the update button and nothing. So it makes it difficult to do any altering.

It doesn't show that there is a graphic loaded. It shows there are 46 objects in layer 1. What does this mean? What am I doing wrong? Can anyone help me. If not, I've bought this for nothing!

[jancy]

try not selecting view: outline until after you have traced it.

feel free to email me the image & I can take a look for you.

[firstcut]

Are you using a PC Crafter CD? it sounds like you might be importing the vector version of the graphic instead of the jpg. Which is easier, at least to me. In that case you do not need to autotrace because you already have it in vector form. What you do need to do is delete any objects you don't want and then choose path>object to path.

[kwedding]

ok. I'll try those things. I just imported an .svg graphic and still can't get it to show up in the preview box for the trace bitmap box. Maybe I shouldn't be importing the graphic and just open it.