honestly, i’m not sure why you don’t start with a vector file to begin with. there are tons and tons of vector state outlines files on the web. here’s an easy one to start with.
https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Outline-map-of-American-states/4642.html
then you don’t have to worry about trying to convert a bitmap, which brings its own issues and takes more work.
I’m sorry you feel that way. I was actually trying to support one of the many people here who were doing their dead level best to help you, despite being essentially yelled for their troubles.
Once your issue is resolved to your satisfaction( you now have a group of very talented people helping you), I respectfully request that you reread your OP and consider how you might react to someone who asks for help, the proceeds to dictate exactly how said help must be provided.
Again my apologies for offending you by offering support to a friend. I’ve deleted the offending post and wish you the best of luck.
I wasn’t sure if this had been answered yet and wanted to make sure you understood. “Dirty” just refers to there being issues with the image that will need “cleaning” up and fixed for it to work well. For example, in the image you posted you can see that Texas is missing a pice of the outline. To clean it up you’d have to go in and close that missing gap. Dirty can also refer to there being little stray nodes (the little anchor points used to draw vector lines) or littler ransom lines that shouldn’t be there. If someone tells you a file is “clean”, they mean that it will work well and there are no issues you’ll have to fix in it.
Well, that I can explain. Videos shorter than 10 minutes cannot be monetized, so creators are incentivized to drag things out and make garbage that is hard to watch.
That would make my life easier. Unfortunately, I started a business with a different machine, making this map. Changing the format would create major issues. I wish I could do that…I think I would have less grey hair. 
Thank you, I appreciate the knowledge. I believe my image is dirty because it is a scanned image. I will close up Texas. I figure once I am able to continue manufacturing these, I will work on cleaning it up and improving the overall quality. Right now, my business is at a stand still until I get this image to cut. It is definitely the wrong time of year to try to learn the ins and outs of a new machine and programs. 
Thank you. I appreciate your help. I posted the jpeg files below and the file after I followed the directions given in a youtube video on how to turn it in to a vector. The “vector” image I uploaded here, I am being told it is not a vector image…even though I followed the directions exactly on said youtube video. I don’t know I am saving it wrong, or if there is a step the youtube video did not cover, but for some reason it is unable to cut. I looked all over fb and the getting started videos on the glowforge app and from what I can tell, I followed all the steps necessary. Because I can’t find any more information, this is why I said I am getting zero help in my original post and turned to the intelligence of this community for the help I am so desperately looking for. So far, no one has been able to tell me what I am doing wrong to turn the jpeg into a cut file. Do you, by chance, know how to do this? Thanks again for all your help. It is greatly appreciated.
Thank you for this information. I didn’t know that you would need my file to understand where I am at. My apologies. I uploaded the files below.
I appreciate your response. I reread my original post. I said I was getting zero help (not from this community of intelligent and knowledgeable individuals, but from the youtube videos and the getting started videos and verbiage.
Being so new at this, it is hard to dictate exactly what I need from the individuals in this forum when I know nothing other than needing to turn a jpeg in to a cut file using inkscape. I wish I was able to better communicate the necessities of what I need, but I am very green at this. This was, in fact, the wrong time of year to switch machinery with all the orders I have waiting and being at a stand still until I have this resolved.
Again, my apologies for my lack of ability to further communicate.
I can’t post screenshots but I can tell you step by step what I have done, starting all over. I opened a PDF of the image in inkscape. I selected the image. I went up to Path and in that category I selected the 3rd one called trace bitmap. It opened a small window. I changed my brightness setting to .54 and clicked ok. I then closed that window and tried to move the image to the side (the vector image on top)
Currently, there is still only the one image, not two. Do you know why it didn’t create the 2nd Vector image? Is it because I started with a PDF?
Hi there! I’m not an Inkscape user so I can’t tell you how that’s supposed to work. However, as an Adobe Illustrator user, I do have access to “trace and expand” which sounds to be the same thing. It seems you’re following the instructions, but maybe you’re missing just a small step somewhere. If Inkscape is anything like Adobe, there will be a lot of official manuals on how to do things as well! Here’s one, for example: https://inkscape.org/en/doc/tutorials/tracing/tutorial-tracing.html
I hope you get it figured out soon. Since you said you super needed the states to be the exact cutouts of the jpegs you shared, I went ahead and did a little work in Illustrator and made this file for you. Just right-click on the image and save it as an SVG! I have it sized to fit within a 12x20 cut space. I’m unsure why you need them to be exactly this shape but I hope this helps you out a little bit.
WOW!!! THANK YOU!!! I really appreciate you doing this. Is there a way I can repay your kindness?
No repayment necessary. I’m happy to help. I understand these things can be really frustrating. I’ve also been using Illustrator for many years now so making files for the GlowForge machine is fairly simple for me, haha. Just keep at it! My best advice is to visit the manuals from the actual program you’re using; I find most of my answers for Illustrator are right there and it takes less time to read those than follow a YouTube video or a huge essay.
Think of this as an early Christmas gift. Happy Forging!
Okay, i usually use Illustrator but I downloaded inkscape and did some playing. Seems if you open something as a PDF you might need to select your image go under edit at the top and select make a bitmap copy. Trace did not work if I saved a raster image as a pdf and opened it in inkscape.
That might be one of the issues with converting it to a vector. PDFs are meant to handle all different kinds of objects within it but it might cause issues. Their primary purpose is to display and print across platforms. Editing capabilities are another thing.
I created a PDF in Word with one simple embedded jpeg. I open it in Inkscape. I was able to click on the embedded bitmap but it didn’t trace the object into vector paths. I tried different operations within the trace function. Thinking through this allowed me to come up with a definition of the problem that I could do a search on for help:
That lead me to this:
http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=19194
Evidently if you click on the bitmap in the PDF you see that it is a grouped object. Hold Ctrl+Shift+g (or Object > Ungroup) to ungroup the object. That releases the bitmap and makes it able to be traced.
I tested this and found this to be the case. I hadn’t had this type of file situation before. I hope that helps solve the issue. There still is the challenge of cleaning up the vectors and ensuring you don’t have multiple paths.
I certainly sympathize with you on this. It is an issue that I would have banged up against and not seen an evident problem right away.
This is one of the challenging issues with technology. File formats are complicated enough. Converting from one to another to another for different machines even more difficult.
This is the first time you mentioned you were using a PDF. You had shared JPG images (which trace in Inkscape.) You even said you had “turned them” into vectors, so that is what we assumed you were trying to trace.
If we’d had that information from the start, this might have gone a lot more quickly.
There is a specific 5-minute quick-vid for how to do this exactly here:
(Since you didn’t want videos, I didn’t mention it earlier.)
Major bonus points here for reproducing the problem and finding an answer to why everyone was talking past each other here. Turns out it is possible for the OP to have been following the instructions and getting different results than all the people frustrated at them for not following the instructions.
THANK YOU!!! 
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