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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?

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.

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?

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.

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!

BruceM wrote: ↑13 Nov 2018, 22:45 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.

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)

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!