A Scanner is intended to just what you have said: create a Bitmap image. There really isn't any other way to scan an image, although there are some methods of manipulating that bitmap when you are done.  Many scanners come with software called OCR (Optical Character Recognition) that can scan in a sheet of text, and then have it come out as text on the computer instead of a bitmap.   There is similar software for graphics, although there are very mixed results depending on the source.  The best software that I have used is included with CorelDraw and has been ever since version 6.  It is called CorelTRACE in the new versions, but it was CorelOCR-Trace in the older versions.

This program will basically import a scanned bitmap and convert it to a vector format.  Of course it will not be as well as manually generated art, there are some instances when it works very well.

There are only a few suggestions that I can offer you.  The first is experiment, experiment, experiment.  Don't be afraid of trying new  things.  That being said, your process looks correct, but I have a