How do humans perceive color? Is it just the way we see it or is color actually there?
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Well, it’s kind of both. When you look at a lemon and see that it’s yellow, that’s because pigmentation works subtractively. White light, which is a combination of all colors within the spectrum is absorbed by the leaf, well almost all of it is absorbed. The pigments reflects light that is 570nm in wavelength but it absorbers everything else. Humans detect light of that wavelength as being green.
Now human have three types of color receptors in our eyes: red, green, and blue. These receptors don’t absorb a single wavelength, but rather have a spectrum they can detect. At the ends of that spectrum they have a weaker response, and in the middle the response gets stronger. What that means is when you see purple yellow light, you don’t have a distinct receptor specifically for yellow, but yellow light does activate both the green and red receptors. This combination of cross activation we then perceive as yellow!
The really cool thing is tvs, and most LED displays, don’t make subtractive color the way the lemon does. The lemon reflects only 570nm light which weakly activates both your green and red receptors. Your TV, however, only produces Red, Blue, and Green light (rbg display). How does your TV show you an image of a lemon? By combining red and green light together at the same relative intensity that your two receptors detect yellow light, tricking your brain into seeing yellow
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