In color theory, a tint is the mixture of increases shade or variety of color, which reduces lightness. A tone is produced either by the mixture of a color with grey, or by both tinting and shading. Mixing a color with any neutral color (including black, gray and white ) 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; while the term "tint" can be generalized to refer to any lighter or darker variation of a color (e.g. Tinted windows).
When mixing colored light (additive color models), the achromatic mixture of spectrally balanced red, green and blue (RGB) 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.
It is common among some artistic painters to darken a paint color by adding black paint —producing colors called shades—or to lighten a color by adding white —producing colors called tints.
