Craft Edge

If you were to import a digital image already coloured and then trace bitmap but with the edge detection on, would it then just cut out the edge of the image?

Not necessarily, it depends on the image. Are you just wanting a silhouette? I think there are probably better ways, but once again it depends on the image.

What I want to do is import a coloured digital image and have it cut around the edge only of it, but it picks up all the fine detailed edges of the different colours and shapes, is there a way around it so that I can get it to just cut out the edge? Thanks.

It depends on the image. One good way to do this if you have a solid background is to use a photo editing program with a magic wand tool on the background and then select inverse. See Dan99's tut for help with that. http://dan99.blogspot.com/2009/01/video ... o-svg.html

If it is a reasonably simple shape, you might want to use the bezier tool in Ink. See Susan Bluerobots tut here. http://susanbluerobot.blogspot.com/2008 ... found.html

You could also try increasing the threshold in the Trace bitmap dialog box.

In the trace bitmap panel try color under multiple scans and then set the colors to the number you want. dan99 has a tutorial on this
Or this might be a candidate for the paint bucket technique
see http://cleversomeday.wordpress.com/2009 ... -inkscape/