from the art terms page:
COLOUR: In very formal writing about colour, the word "colour" (or "color," if you prefer) refers simply to the broad category of visual phenomena in which one can differentiate objects (even otherwise identical objects) by virtue of differences in the portions of the spectrum of light that they reflect. That is, "colour" does not mean a particular colour but the category which includes particular hues and other things like tints, shades, brightness, and saturation. In turn, "hue" refers to the colour name -- i.e., what people mean when they answer the colloquial question "what colour is that?" "Tint" refers to a variation of a hue produced by adding white to it, which typically (though not necessarily) results in a lower saturation and a high brightness. "Shade" refers to a variation of a hue produced by adding black to it, which typically (though not necessarily) results in a higher saturation and a low brightness. "Brightness" obviously refers to the relative amount of light a hue will reflect, while "saturation" refers to chromatic purity (that is, relative freedom of dilution with another hue). The word "chromatic" is clear; it means having an identifiable hue, as opposed to "achromatic" black, white, and gray, all of which are degrees of lightness rather than slices of the spectrum. In contrast, the word "chroma" is often unclear and inconsistent, but it usually indicates a combination of hue and saturation -- that is, a hue's degree of purity, vividness, or intensity as determined by either its freedom from dilution with white or by the way it differs from a gray having the same lightness (i.e., reflecting the same quantity of light). A hue with high chroma is purer and more apparently unadulterated by tints. "Chroma" appears to differ from "saturation" in that the latter can refer to adulteration by another hue, whereas the former refers to the level of adulteration by an achromatic element (black, white, or gray). See also cool colour, warm colour. There is an interesting page on colour and colour vision at York University.
10:21:24 PM 
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