What is the difference between shades and tones

Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Asked 10 years, 9 months ago. Active 3 years, 8 months ago. Viewed 21k times. So do they mean the same thing? Where is it proper to use each of them?

When describing a person's skin, what is the difference between light-toned as opposed to dark-toned and medium-toned and fair-complected? Improve this question. Daniel Tim Tim 1. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Robusto Robusto k 37 37 gold badges silver badges bronze badges. When referring to colours, tone and shade are pretty close in meaning to me.

If I were to make a difference, I'd say that shade is more about the detailed nuance of the colour, while tone can describe broader differences.

That's because bright pure colors are most often associated with children. Generally speaking, almost every color we see in our day-to-day world has been toned to some degree. In the photo below, look at the colors themselves without thinking of them as wool. Almost every bundle is a slightly Toned version of the original pure colors.

Notice how nearly every variation appears to contain a little Gray, that is either a light or dark Value.

Store them in small food containers to have them on hand all the time. It's true this will produce a gorgeous Gray. But be extremely careful. Therefore, when mixed with other paints, colors can get muddy very quickly.

This helps you understand the potential of each color while avoiding unintended muddy colors in your artwork. In other words, it contains absolutely no White or Gray. A Shade darkens the color. It remains the same Hue only a darker version. As has been noted above, even a small amount of White or Gray added to a color, transforms it into a Tone. Therefore a Shade can range from slightly darker than your original color, all the way to nearly Black with barely any of the color mixed in.

As you can see below, the colors in the umbrella have been shaded by the lack of sunlight. However, if you wanted to paint this, you would add a tiny touch of black to each color. Then add your Black a tiny speck at a time. A little goes a long way! Many experienced painters do not use Black at all. These mixtures are gorgeous and complex.

However, unless you've pre-tested your paint mixtures, colors can get muddy very quickly. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Hue vs Color To begin, most people use the terms Hue and Color interchangeably. COLOR is the general term we use to describe every hue, tint, tone or shade we see. White, Black and Gray are often referred to as a color. Adding white to a pure color creates tints. Tints are often associated with pastel colors because they are softer and subtle.

You can mix any of the basic twelve colors together and then add an amount of pure white to get a tint or pastel palette. In the graphic design world, you can adjust the opacity in your software to create a tint. Adding black and white, or gray, to a pure color, creates tones of a color.

Most of the colors we see in our world on a daily basis are tones of a pure color. Adding black to a color creates shades.