I'm having the same problem Toolbox642
I've found out that my saved regions are not located in my simcity 4 deluxe edition in my steamapps folder. But instead they are being saved into my Simcity 4 folder in my documents.
However, my lots and plugins folders still work in my steamapps folder.
But back to the hand at matter, when i try to lead the greyscale jpg by holding down ctrl+alt+shift+r, i've tried loading both files from the steamapps or in my documents and nothing happens.
Gell