Hi folks. I have a bunch of hundred or so year old paper items that I want to scan in to become vector images. I've scanned them in at 600dpi png's, then used pixlr.com to cut them out and make transparent backgrounds. After doing some reading I tried Inkscape's website but it didn't like my images because they were too large so I installed the 64 bit windows program.

Now you've got my backstory...

So when I import an image into Inkscape, the image is significantly larger than the image of the page in the background. I haven't a clue as what to do. I do not want to decrease the size of my image. Should I enlarge the size of the page (like making the sheet larger in a word processor doc)?

Is there a better method to take my paper items and create vectors out of them? They are also different sizes, from an inch tall by half an inch wide, to seven inches tall and ten inches wide. 

Thanks!!!!

Actually you can go ahead with the auto tracing and ignore the size for now and scale the result later to fit a paper size you want maybe print on.

PixelPest

Actually you can go ahead with the auto tracing and ignore the size for now and scale the result later to fit a paper size you want maybe print on.                       Normal   Source

I had to Google what auto tracing is... inkscape.org says, "Keep in mind that the Tracer's purpose is not to reproduce an exact duplicate of the original image; nor is it intended to produce a final product." This is literally the opposite of what I need. The papers that I have are die-cuts and silhouettes, intricate, and so my end result must be exact duplicates, only better, which is why I need the vectors, not the jagged rasters. 

Just for academics, I took the smallest png image, which is just larger than the page image that opens with a new document in Inkscape, and tried an auto trace, without changing any settings. It took about nine minutes for it to complete (on my not slow computer, which I built). Once it completed I honestly didn't know what to expect but the image looked like it did prior to the trace. When I saved the image, the resultant svg file is 151mb (the png is 62k) and whatever parts of the image that was outside of the page image that opens with a new document has been removed. I tried this with other images, and they also were cut off outside the page, but if I didn't auto trace then the svg size was comparable to the png size.

How you're going then to "convert" your scanned images into vector graphics? You can for sure draw it manually but that's really time-consuming regarding a "bunch" of images. I don't want to hold you back. 151MB is ridiculous. Your example file is just 217KB as a vector drawing in size:

@thalron After you run trace bitmap, you'll end up with two copies of the image: the new vector copy and the original image. Are you deleting the original image? If that's still there in the file, that might explain the large file size.

The vector copy should end up on top of the png image after the trace. Click the top object with the node tool. If you see lots of nodes, it's definitely the vector copy. Drag this out the way with the select tool. Underneath, there should be another copy. Click this once with the select tool and look at the toolbar at the bottom of the page. It'll say 'Image [dimensions] in layer...'. That's your png file. You don't need it any more, so delete then save the file. That should get the file size down.

Today when I open any of my png's, the 'page' size morphs into whatever size the image is and is no longer just the standard 'new document rectangle.'  Maybe that had been happening yesterday due to some glitch since it was the first time the program had been opened. I'm also attributing the 151MB file size to that because nothing I can do today can replicate that result.