Thanks that did clear up a few things
(I'm not having trouble so much with the tools as with the conceptual differences, but I'll get there)

1) In Gimp if you use the selection tool it highlights a part of the image. There are no objects 2) Any section of an image 3) Thanks but I don't have bandwidth for videos I've got a bitmap image that I've converted to vector. There are some pixels that I need to erase. How do I do this? If I put it...

Hi, Please bear with me, I'm brand new to Inkscape and not all that accomplished with Gimp either. I'm reading through various tutorials and help files on IS but none seem to answering what I'm looking for: it seems that selecting things only selects objects. How do I select a block of screen? Is th...