I am new to Inkscape. So far very impressed but I have encountered a problem. I have scanned in a drawing and imported it into IS as a PDF. I want to use Path/trace bitmap but when I hit "update" I do not get a picture. I am using brightness cutoff, smooth, stack scans etc as I have learned from the tutorial but it won't work. Is there something obvious I am doing wrong.

I am using a PC with XP. Help very gratefuly received.

Jack

It is a bug in the Windows port of Inkscape 0.48 (confirmed on Windows XP): Apparently the preview updates when clicking 'OK' but not when clicking 'Update'. As far as I understand from the bug report and comments, the regression (no updated preview) is limited to 'Brightness cutoff'. No workaround known at this time.

See Bug #631444 in Inkscape: “Trace bitmap preview broken”

JackC81 wrote:I have scanned in a drawing and imported it into IS as a PDF. I want to use Path/trace bitmap but when I hit "update" I do not get a picture.

Forgot to add: if you imported a PDF file, the raster (aka bitmap) image will be most likely inside several groups, possibly clipped or even masked (depending on the software that created the PDF file). The 'Trace bitmap' dialog only works if the bitmap image, but not if a group containing the image is selected.

Do make sure you actually have the bitmap image selected: the message in the status line tells you if the selection is a (clipped, masked or regular) group or the image itself. 'Ctrl+click' allows to select an object within (nested) groups - without the need to ungroup ('Ctrl+U') or enter ('Ctrl'+<enter>) the groups.

Possibly it is easier if you import the scanned drawing directly as raster graphic (aka bitmap image) - JPG, TIFF or whatever results from the scan.