New to photoshop

[scooterinab]

Greeting. I'm fairly new to photoshop.

I'm recoloring some black and white relief maps (don't ask), and I've hit a snag. I've figured out a way to recolor them, but it's recoloring the lakes and borders, which I need later.

Here's the recolor process in a nutshell. Create a new layer, and fill it with said color. Select "Color" from the layer drop down.

Here's the question. Could some one tell me an easy way to select the borders and lakes without selecting them pixel by pixel? I'm dealing with 3 colors, so it shouldn;t be too hard. I've tried Magic wand, but that just seems to get messy.

Thx

[TraXter]

post your pic

[scooterinab]

As it would turn out, the maps I am using are not all the same scale. They do, originally, have longitude and latitude rulers along the sides, though.

This leads me to a second problem. Is there an easy way to get the maps to the same scale?

Here's a look at what I have.
Unedited Arizona Map Unedited New Mexico Map Edited AZ Map

Ok, so first, I would like to get all of the maps the same size, without putting them into ms paint and resizing it that way. I'm still new with photoshop, and I don't really know how to do this.

Then I need to select the borders and lakes, and seperate them form the picture so I can add them again after I color it. When I color them, the borders disappear, and the lakes get really hard to see.

Also, Photoshop doesn't seem to play nice with GIF, and refuses to do layers. Is there a cleaner file type that I can convert it to that will allow the higher fuctions of photoshop? I just converted it to JPG, but I'd like a cleaner picture if possible.

Thanks a bunch for any help I can get.