Hello! I'm a relatively new user to inkscape. I used it a few years ago to make avatars on Giant In The Playground, so I'm pretty familiar with some basic features. However, I'm trying to make a perspective drawing of a bunch of buildings, and would like to know a few things.

1) How can I create an angled perspective guideline? The guides for inkscape are all vertical or horizontal when I drag them off of the ruler. Is there a way for me to create an angled X, Y and Z axis so I can make my buildings angled peculiarly?

2) I'm having trouble adjusting pencil thickness. Before, I could double click on the color bar and it would open up the options to edit the thickness. The lack of a "tools" tab is making it thoroughly confusing to a guy who has spent his time learning digital art with professional (albeit dated) vector software. So minor issue, but extremely disheartening.

3) Importing/Exporting individual layers? I like to use Photoshop Elements as well as Inkscape since I understand it a bit better, and would like to know how I can export individual layers for editing in either program. Would this be possible without creating new documents for each layer prior to exporting, or do I have to create a separate document for each layer?

1) a. Under document properties AND in preferences you have the option of ceating angled or axonometric grids; if you drag a guide from the top left where the x and y rulers intersect you will get a 45 degree guide; shift- dragging any guide lets you rotate it; doubleclicking on a guide opens a propeties box in which you can specify precise values. My unstable build even lets you change guide colors fo each guide and give it a text label!

1) b. If you really truly want a perspective guide you can create a 3d box withthe tool and choose objects to guides from the object menu. Note that the preferences for this tool has a n option that you have to specify about guides from objects. This will give you the vanishing points for you to align more guides to. If you choose this option you are probably quite expert in drafting and should know where to go from here.

2) The bottom left corner of the IS window has controls for adjusting the fill color, stroke color, stroke width, and opacity. Right-click to access the choices. This is the same for all drawing tools, including the pencil, and is much more space efficient and intuitive once you get the hang of it.

Just a little addendum to druban's point 1: shift-dragging a guide lets you rotate it as he mentioned, ctrl-shift-dragging a guide will snap it to the rotation steps defined in the "Steps" section of the preferences. The default is 15 degrees, which is useful if you want to create isometric guides.

As for your question about exporting individual layers, one option that might work (I haven't tried it) is to save as GIMP XCF format, which preserves layers. It's a raster format, but as your ultimate target is Photoshop I guess that's probably okay. I don't know whether Photoshop can load XCF files directly these days, but The GIMP can save PSD files which might retain the layers, so you might have to download The GIMP to use as an intermediate step. This is pure speculation on my part, so if you try that approach do let us know if it works.

Thanks for the advice. If I have any more questions after toying around, I'll get back to the forums.