Trader273 makes a great point about looking at the whole technical picture. I can't even count how many times I screwed up because I didn't look at the whole picture. I saw a candle, and took the trade then gave my money back. Or I take a trade, seeing the candle disagreeing with me, and lost. Candles are the same thing as bars, they just display the information in a different manner - but the high/low/open/close is all the same. There is no possible way that it's wrong, because theres no possible way that price is wrong. The reason people screw up is because they don't pay attention and look for specific candles.
For some candles work great with their personality, others not so much. That doesn't mean it's wrong or right. I get tired of people acting like candles are some sort of indicator, they aren't indicators - simply price!
People also spend too much time looking for trend reversals in candles. They get a doji at the top of a trend, and short like crazy. The next few days price moves sideways, then pops back up and they lose their shirt. Then they log onto elitetrader and say candles don't work. It's not like a MACD crossover, the only thing that happened was price stalled due to a lack of demand. You would get that same information from a bar or line chart. Now had that spinning top came at a major resistance area with strong volume, it would most likely be a good short for a small retracement of the overall trend. Then that same guy would log onto ET and pretend he knew the secret to trading, just to blow his gains the next week falling into another stupid mistake newbies make. I do it all the time, except I don't waste my time on ET. The problem isn't with candles, but with my inconsistency, I let emotion take over and ignore the painfully obvious signals.
In fact, I would be willing to bet that if you could dumb down
VSA and combined it with market profile and candlesticks you could have one hell of a strategy. The only downfall would be the simple fact it's discretionary, and that in itself would set up many for failure.
As for the OP, it might be more useful to have specific candles highlighted to help you train your eye in real time. But I wouldn't make any trades off it. Then once you have a good idea what to look for, take it off and see how you do. I bet you quickly realize though that the name of the candle is meaningless, but the shape is rather important..