Good day,

I am new to Inkscape and a novice to graphics in general. I plan to use Inkscape as an alternative to Fireworks or Photoshop for the design and prototyping of web sites. Through trial and error plus some research, I can't get one basic question answered. Is there a special technique to import a PSD or PNG that already has layers defined in it, plus have those layers recognised by Inkscape?

Thanks in advance for advice.

I can't really answer your question directly, because I'm not familiar with PSD. But I'm sure someone else will come along and post a reply with the answer.

But I am pretty sure that importing a PNG to Inkscape will NOT preserve the layers. I'd suggest you try exporting a PNG to SVG before opening in Inkscape. (I know this is possible with GIMP, and I'm not sure what other graphics software might offer the option.) I'm not sure if that will preserve the layers, but it's the 1st thing I would try if I wanted to preserve layers in a bitmap type image that's intended to be used in Inkscape.

PNG itself doesn't support layers. Fireworks PNG files use private chunks to provide that sort of information, and I don't know of any non-Adobe software that understands these chunks.

I guess the most appropriate for psd is GIMP