Easy App for Raising Scanned Hand-Drawn Image Levels

Oftentimes I'll need to illustrate something by hand.  Using very light yellow colored paper..

Once done I'll scan the pages and try to add the images to the work I'm doing in Word.

.Scans typically come out pretty anemic.  If  put the DPI too high, takes too long.

So, at 150 DPI I'll then try to use the Auto-Level feature on the free Paint.Dot.Net image app I have on my PC to enhance the images, make them richer in color.

But, for the pages I've scanned using Auto-level makes the colors  come out REALLY intense - to the point of being unrecognizable.  So that even the hand-written number 3 with a circle comes out like this: https://ibb.co/k1CM70g

The best i could do is to reduce the scanner to 75 DPI - then hand modify the Levels.  That comes out pretty well.  But, for lots of pages, it's a lot of work.  Any use of the Autolevels one-click solution, the results are seemingly unusable.

Good folks over at Paint.Dot.Net said the app is really for images, so this was to be expected.

What tool can I use to take these scanned pages and single-click / simply  bump up the levels enough so the images are richer, yet still useable?  To avoid this: https://ibb.co/fMkRwVb

Sincerely,

OT