[ElephantsMyAnus]

The one I was replying to talked about brain processing. Whatever it is doesn't need to and shouldn't be reproduced in photography as the protograph gets processed just like everything else when you look at it.

Reality --> eye --> "brain filter"

Reality --> photo --> eye -> "brain filter"

Cameras should only record the colors as accurately as possible. Or if you want to nitpick again, so that the photo stimulates the eye receptors identically to whatever was captured.

[lmm]

It's physically impossible for a photo to send the same photons into the eye as the original scene did - imagine taking a photo outdoors in sunlight and then viewing that photo indoors, the whitest possible parts of the photo will be literally orders of magnitude darker than the original scene. Similarly you can't reproduce the same colours because you don't have all of the colours available (e.g. there's no way a computer screen using RGB pixels can reproduce the precise wavelength that a sodium lamp gives out). Trying to reproduce the experience of viewing the original scene is the best we can do, and that requires not just physics but biology and psychology. You talk about "eye receptors", but the line where the eye ends and the brain begins is actually very fuzzy - ontogenically your eyes are part of your brain, and the signals passing from eyes to brain are already in a "compressed form" where e.g. a straight line is represented by a single nerve impulse.

[unfocussed_mike]

This explains really well several things I was struggling to explain.

And also introduced me to the word "ontogenically". Thanks twice.

[dagmx]

they already do that to the best of our abilities.

Color is incredibly complex. It's easy to say "we should capture it as accurately as possible" but I don't think you fully comprehend the high complexity involved.

Your concept of matching eye receptors is wrong too. Color is perceptual and subjective. Your perception of color is based on your upbringing, your genetics, your environment, your own mental faculties, your mental state etc... What is accurate? Your eyes see some spectral energy, your rods and cones convert those to signals, your brain then adds that into an aggregate set of information that it's constantly infilling and, most importantly, guessing about.

You can't guarantee that multiple people see color the same.

Now even if a camera could hypothetically capture an image accurately to the real world (IMHO only possible with a hypothetical full spectrum sensor), how would you store it? The second you convert it to RGB data it needs a perceptual conversion to the bit depth of the data format. Now even if you have a file format that can efficiently represent this, you'd also need full spectrum displays so that we could beam that exact color to your retinas.

Color science is incredibly complex. You're trying to trivialize it into matching your own narrow perception of color.