[scribus] Paper size, layers and other issues

[John Jason Jordan]

I need to reproduce a cover originally done in InDesign. I have to
finish this by Monday morning. I have a PDF of the cover from InDesign,
which I placed on a Background layer and set opacity of the Background
layer to 20%. I just wanted the image there so I could recreate all the
objects and position them the same as they were in the original. Then I
created a New Layer to place all the new objects on. My plan was to
delete the Background layer after recreating all the objects on the New
Layer.

Output will be to my own Xerox Phaser 7400DN.

I have it mostly done, so I decided to print it to see how it looked.
The printout came out blank. In the Layers window I have the background
layer unchecked for printing, and the New Layer checked. All the
objects that I created are on the new layer. They appear fine on
screen, but none will print. Exporting to PDF results in a blank PDF.

However, If I uncheck the visible icon for the Background in the Layers
palette, everything disappears from the screen. It appears that all the
objects that are on the New Layer are really on the Background layer.
So I opened the Outline window, right-clicked on each object, and saw
that every one is on the New Layer. Also, even with the Background
layer visible and selected, I cannot select the background image. Also,
the Background layer and the PDF image on it do not appear in Outline.

So my first problem is, what is wrong with my layers? 

My second problem is the page size. The cover will be printed on 12
inch by 18 inch heavy stock. In the Xerox print options this is
referred to as Tabloid Extra. In Scribus I see no such page size
option, or anything close to it. So I chose Custom, and then set the
height to 864 points and the width to 1296 points. So far so good, but
the button for Portrait-Landscape remains on Portrait. Worse, the size
of the sheet on screen is 864 points wide and 1296 points high. If I
use the button to select Landscape then Scribus swaps the numbers for
height and width so the page is still portrait.

So my second question is, how do I create a 12 x 18 inch landscape
page?