Hello Al,
I would like to import a photo and cut out a specific area for use in a graphic. For example, I want the car in the picture, without the surrounding background.

Much thanks

I generally do that type of operation on raster images in GIMP with the eraser, save as a PNG with transparency, then bring into Inkscape.

If the imported photo is a vector image, the objects can sometimes be moved to a layer and the other bits hidden or deleted.

Take a look at these....

Masking and Clipping or SIOX Tracing

Hello:

If you don't want to do it in a graphic-bitmap editor, then similar results can be done with the clipping tool and exporting the "croped" graphic to PNG

- About cliping (and masking):
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Clip.html

- About exporting to PNG:
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL ... Export-PNG

- About "exactly"... well, it depends of your pulse and your eye in this case.

In addition:

Open the raster image in inkscape,
trace the part you want to cut out, and delete the raster image,
then save as an svg.

After that, open the raster image in gimp and open the svg on a new layer as paths.
You can then draw a mask layer of that path and apply it on the raster image.