Stupid PS Question

[MarkusTay]

Not sure if this is even the right forum for this, but here goes -

I haven't mapped in a while, almost a year. I decided to give it another whirl and want to change my 'style', which isn't really mine at all - I just built textures using the official 3rd edition map of the Forgotten Realms. What this did was allow me to create maps that looked just liked the official ones... which was great at the time, but I now find it highly constraining.

The very first thing I wanted to do was change the most obvious copy - the mountains. So I looked through the tutorials here and found one I liked, and realized just how little about PS I really know. I thought I knew a lot, but I got stuck at the very beginning of the first tutorial. I need to take my continent outline and create a white backdrop for the mountains. No problem - I have the outline on a separate layer (that much I know), but after I filled it in with white (leaving the rest of my canvas blank), I still have the outline. I tried several methods of removing it, but all of them were rather complicated. I suppose taking the same outline again and making it white, and then pasting it over the blue outline I have would work, but I'm embarrassed to admit I don't even know how to change the color of the outline without retracing it.

The other thing I thought of - is there a way of filling something in, without having that 'filler' become part of the same layer? ***SOLVED***

I've never really rolled-up my sleeves and gotten my hands dirty with the more intricate workings of PS - everything I know I learned from the ZombieNirvana videos (which are excellent). But now it appears I need a LOT more tools if I want to create stuff from scratch.

so, my first question - whats the easiest way to go from my blue coastal outline to a plain, white continent? I have a feeling when this is explained to me it will be one of those Homer Simpson "uh-DOH!" moments....

EDIT: Never mind - don't know how to delete a thread, but I just figured out a method using the magic wand. However, if anyone still wants to tell me how to swap one color for another I could still use that info.

EDIT: Still not an ideal method - I am now filling in ALL the area that is not Coast and rivers, including the (sea) area outside the continent.