Do most good online players make use of player colors? What would be the standard way to bucket players into colors?

I do, not saying I'm good. It helps for instant identification purposes, also you see them in the lobbies.

Categories I use are nit, regfish, loose passive, lagtard and maniac. Different people uses different categories.

Colour codes are extremely useful, imo. There's no "standard" way but I like the traffic light system. Green for "Go to valuetown" (calling stations), Red for "Stop and think" (nits), Orange/Yellow for proceed with caution (regs/tags). That said, I use about 10 different colours on Stars, as I like to colour-code short-stacks, lags and maniacs too. See https://www.pokerschoolonline.com/bl...your-opponents

I used to have about 5, now I only use 3

Blue = can play (regs and better)
Green = cannot play (fish, whales and tards)
Orange = WTF? (usually loose multi tablers)

I take everything else I need from the HUD, which is colour coded quite nicely now, and the default villain styles are as accurate as I need them (nits, ABC, tags, lags, fish, whales)

In tourneys I use the same codes to denote whether or not I think a villain "gets" ICM.

I also note-label multi tablers, nits and shortstackers, which can help down the line, when you meet them again.

I use a few. Like nits and stations but most of all I use the yellow which stands for "<fill in something bad>", it's like 90% of all people I tag.

Thanks everyone!

Does anybody find it useful to distinguish between LP station and LP fit-or-fold?

I'm using PokerTracker 4, which doesn't seem to have any ability to use player-type icons or any identification other than color. Is that true? Would the icons be enough of a reason to think about switching to HEM?

You can colour code in the poker client itself, at least on Stars and some others.

LP fit or fold, you should probably pick up from their stats. Only thing I will say is, at nanstakes certainly, by far your biggest pool of fish is LPs. So if you have to sub-group anyone, those are the ones to do.

You like to colour code short-stacks even though you can just look at the numerical value shown next to each player's name to determine someone's stack size in that particular hand?

Strange.

Knowing someone usually short stacks and they now have a large stack is solid information.

What does it tell you?

fish, tight, reg or semi tight, good or semi aggressive, preraiser or postflop tight or aggro all way if not enough colors to separate these from lags.

Then there is the mixed, meaning he is a combination of lag and rock or something like that. Then overaggro that might also use the preraiser or lag color, just knowing there is one of these three aggros, the notes and stats showing more. Passive is one more but he isnt tight.

Hot player color i also use so i can avoid them hu and see i have okay position and that not many hot players are there and that they are not too aggro also and that i play clearly better. I also temporarily mark brazilians and eastern europeans, in case enough colors, though i could use hem also but dont have the need where i play. I might use some more at stars but thats about it.

Also making sure if i have a note, it doesnt put some significant color there also or where it will, i know what it is and can check the notes.

Notes can have additional details.

Well someone that commonly buys in shortstack, but then finds himself deep I find to have trouble making the switch to deep stack play. Obviously other reads could override this.

the most useful aspect of coloring people is for table selection purposes

Fish
-nitfish
-callingstationfish
-fishmaniac

Reg
-Good
-Weak
-Spewwy

SUPERTOTALMEGAMANIAC

For one thing, short-stacks tend to be bad players, so if they show up with a deeper stack at some point, I know they got a double-up and are fairly likely to spew it away, unless they are a "good SS", in which case they will almost certainly rathole their winnings.
For another, it's simply quicker to look at the bloody great circle round someone's avatar than peer at the 4 digit number underneath it. e.g. If I see that both the blinds have orange circles, I'll change my open size or range.

As Farberator pointed out, colour codes are also very useful for table selection. If a table is full of shorties, it's probably not going to be a very profitable table.

Fair do's sir.