> Aren't these in direct conflict? If you can't resaturate it, that implies it's not desaturated.
Kinda. There's a singularity in the math. The problem is that hue is defined as an angle and saturation is defined as distance from the center, but there's no consistent way to define a direction for the origin. Black and white have the same problem because they're also desaturated.
> And if you buy a forest motif, people will be upset if it's pink. That's just doing a tie-dye wrong, not a rebuke of whether it's a color at all.
I'm not arguing that it's not a color, just that it doesn't belong in all gradients!
Of course it doesn't belong in all gradients. It would only be in gradients that go from near-opposite colors. Or if you mean pure gray it would only be in gradients between exact opposite colors, and there are no good options for such a gradient.
I mention tie-dye because it feels like a quintessential example of a color gradient. I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask for a blue and orange tie-dye shirt and perfectly reasonable to not want grey colors simply because they're on opposite sides. I could see white in between, I could even see black, or I could see purple and red or cyan and yellow. I don't think there's a universally right answer here!
Someone asking for those colors doesn't actually want a gradient with two anchor points. So yes there are many answers but because it's not a quintessential example of a gradient.
Aren't these in direct conflict? If you can't resaturate it, that implies it's not desaturated.
> I think if you buy a tie-dye shirt or phone case and it comes out half grey, despite it being a valid color, most folks will be disappointed.
And if you buy a forest motif, people will be upset if it's pink. That's just doing a tie-dye wrong, not a rebuke of whether it's a color at all.