Can I manipulate a would-be greyscale sprite? (please read)

If I had a sprite that was greyscale, all the images, but I set aside a separate animation or a separate frame per animation (not sure which is required) that contains say a 16x16 sprite with all 256 possible colors, could that allow me to shift with the hue effect?

Well, why not directly using the Tint effect then? or even Tint with Adjust HSL if you want more control?

Demo

capx

Okay I was told way earlier that you couldn't have a greyscale sprite and change it's colors... I didn't try because it's kind of a big part of the game I'm designing and didn't want to do something without knowing more.