Hi, my name is Jonathan.

I'm an avid Photoshop user and can and have performed extensive work in Photoshop for many years.

I installed the newest stable release of InkScape (0.48) and glanced at the menus and features, and I'm beginning to love it, except for one thing. I'll start by describing what I did:

I took a photo of a page and opened the .jpg in InkScape
Firstly, I wanted to crop it, so I searched for the crop icon and clicked it, started dragging a box, adjusted the box, and tried to apply it but couldn't. Nothing happened, the image remained the same and there was no undo history. (Keep reading)
Secondly, I wanted to despeckle it (a common, default function I've performed countless times in Photoshop, both manually and by batch macros)
It took over an hour of searching guides and tutorials, and perusing the menus to find that function and at one point I had mistakenly installed Image Magick thinking that it was not already included in InkScape.
So I clicked Despeckle in the menu, but nothing happened (i.e. The image didn't change, and there was no undo history.)
Recently, I zoomed in on the image to view the pixels, and then zoomed out.

Now, I can't even find the crop function to continue experimenting with it.

Please help, as I appear to be totally lost.

Hello there!

Inkscape creates svg based vector graphics, so it's not the best tool to use for editing raster images.
You may have a better luck with gimp.
http://docs.gimp.org/en/plug-in-despeckle.html

Actually I never realised a crop function's icon in inkscape.
Instead of "cropping", you can set clipping by any shaped objects, that you have to draw first.

Good luck!

I've tried gimp many times and dislike most variations of it. InkScape seems to be able to do almost everything. I'd just like a quick tip on how to apply and find any function. A more influence intuitive user interface would be nice in the future too.

Btw, my favorite variation of gimp is gimpshop.

On my other computer, I know I saw a cropping icon and tried to use it, but then couldn't find it again. It was in the tool bar immediately after opening my first jpg image. I reinstalled InkScape on another computer and loaded a jpg. There's no "cropping" tool bar button. So I proceeded to try to use the Clip > Set function, but it always clips the wrong object, (i.e. the one I just created to clip the one under it). How do I make it clip the first object. It seems it doesn't matter which object I select first, and they don't show on any layers.

I just copied the background image and pasted it into a layer then deleted the background image and created a rectangle on another newly created layer and tried the Clip > Set and it still clips the rectangle I just created instead of clipping the layer below it. What gives?

So... I created a new document > default. Then created a rectangle (blue) then created a circle over one corner (red) then held shift and clicked the rectangle so both were selected and used Clip > Set and the CIRCLE got clipped. How do I clip the rectangle instead?

Change the z-order of the objects -move the circle to the bottom (End) or raise the rectangle to the top (Home).
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Clip-Clipping.html