[ELI5] What would happen if instead of using just red, green and blue, we used more pixels colors, like yellow or white?

Question

[ELI5] What would happen if instead of using just red, green and blue, we used more pixels colors, like yellow or white?

In: Technology

Answer 1

The fact is, human eyes lose information. A wide variety of possible combination of mixture of wave length and intensity get mapped into the activation pattern of just a few type of cells. Because of this, completely different mixture of light can produce the same color.

If your goal is merely reproduce the image as how a human would see it, all you need are a few pixels that activate these cells the same way. RGB is based on our understanding of what cells are there in our eyes.