Well, I don't know why you are using the word string - string is a term of art in scripting, and it refers to a particular type of object. But you wouldn't be able to change anything with it unless you use the eval method. You also haven't specified what kind of objecy you're dealing with. So, I'm a little deterred from responding to this topic for fear that you don't have enough knowledge that I can respond to this without explaining every detail. Here goes anyway:
Assuming you are using a Bitmap, you can use the hue_change method to change the hue:
<bitmap object>.hue_change (0-360)
So, something like this, if you were referring to the bitmap in a window:
self.contents.hue_change (24)
To change the size, I'm assuming you mean stretch or shrink it. To do this, you would redraw it onto another bitmap and use the stretch_blt method. So if <bitmap 1> is the one you want to enlarge, you would do the following:
new_size = Rect.new (0, 0, width, height)
<bitmap 2>.stretch_blt (new_size, <bitmap 1>, <bitmap 1>.rect)
If, on the other hand, you are dealing with Sprite objects, you would change the tone with the following method:
<sprite>.tone = Tone.new (red, green, blue, gray)
to change the color to be blended with it:
<sprite>.color = Color.new (red, green, blue, alpha)
To change the size, you could use the code:
<sprite>.zoom_x = float
<sprite>.zoom_y = float
where float simply means a decimal number. 1.0 = 100%, 1.5 = 150%, etc...
Again, <sprite> is a Sprite object - it's the object you want to operate on, so I assume you know what it is.