I know this question has probably been asked before somewhere online, but I have been looking everywhere and cannot find an answer. Is there away to transfer Inkscape SVG paths to photoshop safely so they remain as paths in photoshop cs5? I already tried importing the SVG file into photoshop, but that process turns the paths into part of the image making them uneditable.

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It might not be possible. I'm not familiar with Photoshop CS5, but it sounds like a photo editing program. And most photo editing programs use only or mostly raster graphics. Inkscape is a vector graphics editor, so it's very different. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_graphics) I know that it's possible in The GIMP (an open source raster editor) to work with paths, and I suppose import paths from Inkscape and/or SVG. I know it has a path tool.

So if this Photoshop has any kind of path tool, there's probably way to do it. And if there is, it should be explained in the documentation or help files. If not, I'm guessing it's not possible. I did look up the program, but the about page didn't say clearly whether it can handle paths. Apparently there is some kind of Extended version which sounds like might be possible to import paths. But I did not read closely.

I also don't use Photoshop but I'd be surprised if it couldn't handle path, maybe it's in the way you import/open SVG. Have you saved it as Plain SVG and then tried to open in Photoshop?

Photoshop doesn`t support SVG format. But you can use the plug-in SVG Kit for Adobe Creative Suite by Scand Ltd. that allows you to import you SVG file in Photoshop and your image will be shrinked into layers automatically. You can get it here: http://svg.scand.com/