I'm looking into prototyping a game in Unity which will consist of solid square sprites / tiles. I figure I can represent different types of objects with different colors for each of the tiles in the game.

I figure that I can import a single square sprite and shade it appropriately in Unity as opposed to imported squares of many different colors.

My experience with adjusting the hue and saturation within Photoshop shows that white is not an easy color to change as things that are white often stay white. My testing in Unity shows that I can change the "color" of a sprite to anything other than white and the sprite is seemingly shaded appropriately, despite what I would have thought given my Photoshop experience.

Since white objects do seem to take on the appropriate color shading when changed within Unity my gut tells me that this is the best base color to begin with, meaning that I can import a single white square sprite and simply adjust the color to represent different objects and object states.

Is a white sprite actually the best color sprite to begin with and why does something like this work in Unity as opposed to adjusting the hue and saturation within Photoshop?