> But is it just a luminosity difference? Is magenta just like a lighter shade of maroon, or is there a hue difference? I always thought maroon was more purplish than the NextGen red uniforms... or maybe I'm thinking mauve...
>
> Dar "Aaaaa! Too many shades of red that start with "M!"" ien

Just playing around in Photoshop...

Maroon' hue is at 0-degrees (a 360-degree color wheel sets red at 0-degrees), 100% saturation, and 52% brightness, while Magenta is at 329 degrees (away from Yellow and Green, towards Purple and Blue), 100% saturation, and 77% brightness. This color system is a color solid. The central core contains your gray values (100% brightness is white (the top of the solid), 0% is black (at the bottom of the solid)). The brightness value indicates your vertical position in the solid, the saturation value is how close you are to the core. Your purest colors (primaries, secondaries, and Maroon and Magenta) are at 100% saturation, or on the skin of the color solid. A link at the bottom of this post goes to a page with a line drawing of a color solid.

Maroon's luminosity is 36, while Magenta's is at 48. a and b values are 55, 49 and 83, -3, respectively (I just asked someone in the art department what the a and b in the Lab color mode mean, but they didn't know. We usually use RBG or CMYK color values).

RGB (Red/Green/Blue) values for Maroon are 133,0,0; Magenta is 197,0,103. This color range goes from values of 0 to 255, with 0 closest to black and 255 closest to white. RGB color is used with light -- your computer monitor, your television set.

Magenta is mainly used in printing four-color process images. The color photos in magazines, newspapers, and on billboards are printed in CMYK colors (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black). Magenta is pinkish-purple, Cyan is a brilliant light blue, Yellow and Black are very close to what most people think Yellow and Black are.

Maroon is a deep blood red, close to Burgandy or a dark Crimson. Maroon is one of Texas A&M's colors and can be found everywhere on their website (http://www.tamu.edu).

So, on the color solid, Magenta is skewed towards the purple and much brighter than Maroon.

-Faux "wearing 3-D glasses" Pas