Hello! First of all, I'm very new to Inkscape/graphic design/getting stuff printed in general. Here's my issue:

I'm trying to design a business card and since I don't have Illustrator/Indesign, I'm using Photoshop. For obvious reasons, I'd like to deliver the files to my printer in vector format (pdf) to avoid the text turning out burry. So I designed the card in Photoshop and figured I'd convert it to a vector in Inkscape. It's a very simple design, three colours total. No gradients etc.

I used 'trace bitmap' to vectorise some .png files yesterday and it worked spendidly but when I try to vectorise the .pdf files literally nothing happens. It won't even show a live preview. I'm definitely selecting the image and when I convert the file to a .jpg in photoshop and import it in Inkscape, 'trace bitmap' works great (but saving as a .jpg makes the colours look different and I can't save as a .png since I'm working in CMKY). I'm working on a Mac btw. Am I missing something? What gives?

Any help appreciated!

Look into the status line at the bottom when you have the object that you want to trace selected with the node tool.

What does it say?

- Group of... -> ungroup
- Path ... -> already a vector, no tracing needed
- Image -> this can be traced

Aside from that - why did you create it in Photoshop if you plan to trace it anyway in Inkscape?

Ohhhh thanks so much for your comment, I needed to ungroup. Problem solved!

As for why I made it in Photoshop first: I'm far more familiar with Photoshop and I have a decent grasp of the basic features. Inkscape is a total mystery to me.