Photoshop help??

[N_Jay]

I am looking for a little bit of help with Photoshop.

Heree is what I need to do. I can get close but am sure I am doing it the hard way, and I never get exactly what I want.

I have a GIF or BMP file to start with.
It is a map (Mostly gray scale with some colored information).
It has an area highlighted with a color (usually green).

What I want to end up with is a image of the green portion with the rest of the image transparent.

I can usually get the green area to select using the magic want tool.

I can cut this to a new image.

I can remove the shading from the green to get a solid color.

I can not seem to get the non-Green (now white) area to become transparent.

[PaulV7]

Select the green area. If the magic wand tool works use it. Another way is to use the Color Range select tool. In the menu under Select then "Color Range" you can select the green and it will pick up all the green. You can give it a range as to how close the the actual pixel you selected it will select. Example if you select a pixel and have the range set to 1 it will only select pixels exactly that same color, no variance at all.

Ok now to make the rest of the image transparent. Once you have the green selected make sure the marquee tool is selected (top left, the select tool) and right click inside a selected area. Select "Layer via cut"

Now you will notice in your layer menu that you have a "Background" layer and a "Layer 1" Layer 1 being the green stuff and Background being everything else.

From the layer menu you can adjust the transparency of the Background layer and it will only make that layer transparent.

edit added note:
Once you have the 2 layers you could always just delete the background layer as well. Then all you would be left with is a Layer 1 with only the green stuff.

[N_Jay]

Looks like I got it doing what I need.

Thanks