Color Saturation

A color's saturation indicates it's more or less content of white, gray or black. When a surface reflects exclusively a determined color we say that it is very saturated . On the other hand, if it is joined to other wavelengths with which they add up to white light, the color will appear more “bleached”, less pure, even though the tone is still the same. For example: imagine that a surface reflects only red: say it is a bright red, saturated; let's take another surface of the same color that also reflects small equal doses of

green and blue: in this case, the sum of the parts of green and blue with and equal part of red translates into white light reflected with the rest of the predominant red. Between the two colors there isn't a difference in tone but there is of saturation . The same occurs when we add gray or black to any color: the tone doesn't vary but the color appears darker every time. This is why it is said that white, gray and black are neutral colors (of no saturation): adding them to any other color doesn't alter it's tone but it does alter it's saturation, it's purity.