This ability of PIPE was removed during the last update, correct.
It was very underused and the preferred method now is to use PROP tool.
Select PROP and pick ctype, 0-1 is initial pipe (grey), 2 is red, 3 is green, 4 is blue.

Yeah it changed again, lol.
.tmp = 0x40000 = red
.tmp = 0x80000 = green
.tmp = 0xC0000 = blue

May slightly conflict with single-pixel or PPIP flags, but if you're just creating the initial flags it works fine.

It was changed because the element limit was increased, so there wasn't enough room to store element type in .ctype before. I moved element into .ctype and color into .tmp