I don’t understand the conclusion that magenta doesn’t exist because it doesn’t fall on the ROYGBIV color spectrum. Like how can we say a color that is naturally occurring in nature, that we can see does not exist because it is not on a man-made color spectrum? Why is it not that the ROYGBIV color spectrum flawed instead?
Some say our eyes are tricked into seeing it because it doesn’t exist…why is it a trick if it is how we would naturally see it?
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Check out the [Line of Purples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Line_of_purples.png). On this graph, all the spectral colours are shown on the curved border with the wavelengths marked in blue letters. But the straight part of the border is the Line of Purples. Our eyes see these as fully saturated colours but they’re not spectral colours because no one wavelength of light can create these colours.
Our eyes have long (L), medium (M) and short (S) wavelength cells (roughly, red, green and blue). Light which stimulates just L and M cells can be matched with just a single wavelength, because the L and M wavelengths are next to each other. The same with M and S. But L and S are far apart, separated by M, so the only way to make colours involving just L and S cells is with at least two separate wavelengths. Using a wavelength between L and S will stimulate the M cells and look green.
It might help to think about how we see yellow. You can make a pure yellow with just a single wavelength, around 580 nm. But you can also make yellow by mixing a red and a green wavelength, like 540 nm and 620 nm. The second yellow is just as much a real colour as the spectral version; they’ll look almost exactly the same.
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