I am not big on terminology either so here goes. There are a great many different ways to change a color of a material, starting with taking the texture map into your Photoshop program and modifying it in there. click on the diffuse color box and add a color value or press on the alt key and change the color in that color picker section. You can add tint by changing the color in the specular box, I say tint as this is used for highlighting, but it can change tint You can add a math function to the diffuse color such as my favorite "Blend" You can add a whole new color by using the Alternate diffuse box You can use both refract and reflect to change color, remember changes there will be light sensitive, for those of you that have read the manual and the advise not to do this , forget them directions, this is serious play time here so play...lol I do it all the time.. You can add in a translucency color and value, results can be unpredictable and fun. You can add subsurface scattering and then change the color values. You can do all kinds of crazy things I like to have lots of variations in my colors I have made all kinds of different gradients in my photoshop program to include just simple gray scales gradients to add to your colors...Sky is the limit... One more thing, you can change the color of your lighting too..

The point is this is just a few of the ways to modify color in the material room, Set the manual aside and have some fun playing with the entire spectrum of boxes and colors and values....nothing is written in stone...It's totally your sand box and you are in charge of the shovel and it's your pail so...play!!!! You can take full credit for any happy accidents or new ways of doing things. Keep one thing in mind, everything you do in the material room affects your render time, get too clever in the material room and you can increase you render time dramatically....It can even get you kicked out of poser so save before you render...