I'm trying to take a picture (.bmp, .jpg, .png) and put some nice effects on it, but I can't because the object isn't a path of course. How do I make my way around to convert that picture into a fully operatable, path picture. I really don't want to draw it by hand : (.
Basically, I want to be able to apply gradients on a black, silhouette picture I got off a search.

Try path>Trace bitmap

Thank you so much!