Hi Peter, thanks for your help. I am able to change the colour of the image as described. My problem is that when an image colour is 'paper' it is the same 'paper' colour as the background of the image, so you have an white/paper image on a white/paper background. I would like the background of the image to be transparent, not white, but still showing the image as white. So that, as described initially, I would be able to see the next object below through the white image.
If images with transparency cannot be colorized this way, how would I be able to work around this? As stated earlier it is such an easy process in Quark Xpress that I am surprised that it isn't possible in InDesign.