Tints and shades
In color theory, a
tint is the mixture of a color with white, which increases lightness, and a
shade is the mixture of a color with black, which reduces lightness. A
tone is produced either by the mixture of a color with gray, or by both tinting and shading. Mixing a color with any neutral color reduces the chroma, or colorfulness, while the hue remains unchanged. In common language, the term "shade" can be generalized to furthermore encompass any varieties of a particular color, whether technically they are shades, tints, tones, or slightly different hues. When mixing colored light, the achromatic mixture of spectrally balanced red, green and blue is always white, not gray or black. When we mix colorants, such as the pigments in paint mixtures, a color is produced which is always darker and lower in chroma, or saturation, than the parent colors. This moves the mixed color toward a neutral color—a gray or near-black. Lights are made brighter or dimmer by adjusting their brightness, or energy level; in painting, lightness is adjusted through mixture with white, black or a color's complement.