Help with editing an image

What I really need to do is take a thumb print that I have scanned and make the background transparent so I can use it in pages and I also what to change the color from black to red.

What would be the best program to do this and how would I go about doing this?

Any help would be appreciated.

Making the background transparent can be quite a task. I don't think any freebies out there will do that job easily.

johhnyfive, I have achieved what you are talking about several times with great effect!

All I do is open my fave Word Processing App and when I've finished the text for that page - I just import the image and set it's transparance using the tools that usually appear when an image is added to any document and is still highlighted. Then all you need to do is send the image to the back to reveal the text and tweak the transparancy until you're happy with it.

Now, I don't use Pages but will hazard a guess that it'll allow the import of images.

The only part that's got me stumped is changing the colour .... ???

For a real quick solution, use Photoshop or GIMP and just lower the opacity of the image.
If you want to change the color, just play with the hue and saturation levels of the image.