COLOR What is saturation?

Saturation is the purity, or intensity of a color. The most-saturated colors are usually the ones we buy, full strength, in the art store, such as cadmium red, ultramarine blue, or permanent green, etc. It is not possible to make cadmium red more red. It is fully saturated when we purchase the tube of paint. It is only when we add other colors, especially black and white, that the saturation of cadmium red would lessen. When colors are “greyed” down with black and white, they become less saturated. However, saturation is always relative. If we make a grey with a tiny amount of orange, in addition to black and white, we would say it is more saturated than a grey that is only made by mixing black and white together. Black and White have zero saturation, so adding them to other colors lessens the colors’ saturation.