Why when I use the document dialog box and set the background to transparent it shows up white, not checkered. Also when I export the clip art I have created as a .png file into Adobe Premiere Elements 10 it shows up with a white box around it instead of a floating clip art.

Welcome to InkscapeForum!

The Inkscape canvas is transparent by default. You should not need to do anything to make it transparent, unless you previously had removed the transparency. So I'm guessing that perhaps you made it opaque, thinking you were making it transparent. That would explain the PNG having a white background.

The canvas LOOKS the same, whether the background is transparent or not. It just looks white. The only place in Inkscape, where transparency is indicated by the traditional checkerboard pattern, is in the color controls. I think I read somewhere that there are plans to offer a checkerboard on the canvas, to indicate transparency, but I don't know when that will happen. Personally, I prefer the white. It's one of the things that attracted me to Inkscape. But I understand that some people are accustomed to the checkerboard. If you want the checkerboard, you could create your own custom default doc. We can tell you how to do that, if you don't know

I don't think I changed the canvas from the default. I would like to know how to make my own custom default. Thanks

The reason I thought you might have inadvertently changed it, is because you said you used "...the document dialog box and set the background to transparent...". Nothing needs to be set, to have a transparent background.

Anyway, here are the instructions. First, you have to draw the checkerboard. There are probably a few different ways to do it. The most efficient would be to use Tiled Clones. But if you're not familiar with that dialog, there might be a learning curve, which would make it not so efficient. So draw the checkerboard, in whatever way. You might want to make a separate layer for it, perhaps below layer 1, so that you can hide it before exporting PNGs. Otherwise, the checkerboard will also be exported.

Next, make any other customizations that you want. For example, mine is a custom size, in landscape orientation, with page border displayed and shadow hidden, and at 100% zoom. (I'm annoyed by the default 35% zoomed doc.) Pretty much anything you can do with Inkscape, can be put into a custom default doc or template. For example, guides, multiple layers, or even objects on the canvas (besides the checkerboard).

Then save as default.svg, and put in C:\...username...\Inkscape\templates. Actually you could name it "my checkerboard template" or anything. If you name it default.svg, that's what will open every time you start inkscape. If you name it anything else, it will appear in File menu > New dropdown, which shows all the templates I'm afraid that I don't know the exact path for all the os, but I know these for Windows:

Windows XP - C:\Documents and Settings\[USERNAME]\Application Data\Inkscape\templates
Windows Vista - C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Inkscape\templates

(If someone could provide the proper path for the other Inkscape capable os, I'd like to write a small tutorial. Then I could link to instructions, and not type it out every times. Thx )

On Linux it's ~/.config/inkscape/templates where "~" is the user's home directory (usually /home/[USERNAME] ).

Note that "~" is a tilde character. I thought I'd better clarify that because it's looks very similar to a hyphen in the font that the forum appears in on my machine. Here's a bigger one, for clarity:

Tilde: ~