Replacing the black areas of hi-con matte with a color? Topic is solved

[BruceM]

I have a black & white hi-con matte that I've pulled from a short live action clip of water ripples. I want to color the black areas
How does one replace the black areas of a hi-con matte with a chosen color?

[slowtiger]

Set the layer to "preserve alpha", drag a coloured rectangle over the frame, undo, select all frames, re-apply.

If the white is not transparent, use the "Scan cleaner" first.

[BruceM]

Thanks Slowtiger, but I'm not quite following this.
I've clicked on the "preserve transparency" button on the hi-con matte layer. Created a colored rectangle and dragged that layer on top of the matte layer.
But then when you write "Undo", what action do I undo. And by "re-apply", what do I re-apply?

[slowtiger]

OK. Step by step.

Is it black areas on white? Use Scan Cleaner on all frames.

Is it black areas on transparent? Good. Switch on "preserve transparency". Drag a rectangle over the first frame. All black should be coloured now. Is it? Good. Undo. Select all frames. Hit "Enter", that's "re-apply". All frames should get coloured now.

This Undo. Select all frames. Hit "Enter" sequence works with all tools, it's essential for changing lots of frames at once in TVP.

[BruceM]

That worked! I was leaving out the "hit enter/reapply" part.
This is one of those TVP procedures that seems so non-intuitive. I'll definitely need to keep a copy of your instructions for future use because I'll never remember this one!

Thanks again Slowtiger!

[Peter Wassink]

This is one of those TVP procedures that seems so non-intuitive. I'll definitely need to keep a copy of your instructions for future use because I'll never remember this one!

it may seem like that at first...but its like driving a stickshift, first you think: " how will i ever learn this?" , but over time it will become automatic and you can no longer recall how this was ever non-intuitive.

[slowtiger]

And the longer I use it, the more I invent special workflows around it to use it to my advantage. If only this would be scriptable ... (with the ability to store away the action in case)

[BruceM]

Peter & Slowtiger,

You're absolutely right! I was just going back and re-reading some instructions from 2014 that I'd copied from Paul Fierlinger. As it turns out, he described this same process to globally reposition a character's walk so that the end of his first two steps could hook up with his next two.
It seems crazy to me that it works, but who am I to argue? I just need to remember it!

Thanks again!