Read image grayscale opencv 3.0.0-dev

The flag has been renamed to cv2.IMREAD_GRAYSCALE. Generally speaking, flags now have names prefixed in a manner that relates to the function to which they refer. (e.g. imread flags start with IMREAD_, cvtColor flags start with COLOR_, etc.)

Try this it works for me

import cv2
im_gray = cv2.imread('gray_image.png', cv2.IMREAD_GRAYSCALE)
thresh = 127
im_bw = cv2.threshold(im_gray, thresh, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)[1]
cv2.imwrite('blackwhite.png', im_bw)