I'm hoping that someone who knows more than I do can help. I've been using Adobe Express to remove image backgrounds and this generally gives me images with good edges that I can work well with in Inkscape. The problem is that when I select the object the corners of the object can be quite a distance from the visible bit - I'm guessing they're the size of the original image. This gives me a couple of problems - I regularly get the wrong object but more significantly it prevents me from using the copy height separately on bundles of stuff I bring in. Is there anything in Inkscape that would allow me to trim the size to just the visible portions?   

This may be because Adobe created a clip and your visual bounding box is set to geometric.

Select the image, look at status bar, bottom of screen, if "clipped" is mentioned. Another way to do is to open object's panel ( ctrl+shift+L) and see if there is a scissor icon on image. 

If so, you can either switch to a visual bounding box (edit > preferences then cllick on tools) or make a bitmap copy of the image ( the resolution of exported images can be set in preferences). If you do need to keep geometric boundind boxes.

Btw you can also lock image if you want to avoid selecting it, or hold alt to select under the image (first alt click selects the image, the other ones select deeper oblects, depending on z order). 

An example Inkscape SVG file that has the issue could help us find a solution.

Thanks very much for your help. Locking the images is a big help with lots of problems I've been having accidentally moving things. I cant see any change when I  change between visual bounding box and geometric bounding box. I attach a simple example that demonstrates. In the example the two images are the same height but clearly the subject matter sizes are quite different. 

I'd try clipping:

That was great. Thank you,