How can I get a scanned, drawn outline completely black and white?

I try to make the picture black and white in paint, and it competely screws up. I tried my scanner's black and white options, but it is not completely black and white (the edges close to the black are gray or something). So how can I make the picture/outline, that I hand drew and scanned, black and white? I have Adobe Photoshop Portable that I installed from a friend, but I have no clue on how I can do this. Please help!|||Auto level it then use image/adjustments/threshold. {I've not used "portable". I'm assuming both functions are there.}





Alternately you can get Gimp for free:





http://www.gimp.org/windows/





and have a complete editing program.|||scan it as a bitmap perhaps. You can also convert the MODE to BITMAP after you've scanned it in.





Another option would be to scan it in as a grayscale image, and bring it into illustrator cs3 and use the black and white tracing option, which will turn your image into a scalable vector graphic.





When all else fails, scan it in as is, and trace over your lines in illustrator. Most illustrators do it that way instead of converting....tough to give you the best advice however w/out actually seeing the image. :)