Saturation is an artist’s term for the intensity or purity of a color, ranging from vivid and brilliant (saturated) to muted and grayish (desaturated).
A highly saturated color appears strong, clean, and vibrant. I often describe saturated color as something pulled directly from a rainbow in the sky— not literally, but you know the kind of clear rainbow-bright color I’m talking about.
Saturation can be reduced by mixing a color with its complement or another neutralizing color such as white (tinting), black (shading), gray (toning), brown (neutralizing), or even adding clear solvent (diluting).
Desaturating a color changes the flavor of the hue but it doesn’t always change the value.
Saturation is not the same as lightness, darkness, or pigment load. A color can be very light or very dark and still be highly saturated. And a heavily pigmented pencil can contain a lot of pigment that happens to be muddy or pale in color.
