wvmarle:
Nice trick. Won't work for measuring the sky, though.For representing all colours: if you have a set of three LEDs the spectrum of which perfectly match the sensitivity of the colour receptors in the human eye, then you should be able to recreate all colours humans can distinguish.
First problem: men and women have quite different colour perception. Women can distinguish many more shades in the green/blue/purple parts of the spectrum. That's even before individual differences (which is more than just colour blindness).
You don't need to match the LEDs to the eye, matrix math will take care of that. Besides the color response of the S, M and L cones (in trichromatics) overlaps, and are composed of quite complicated curves. Using the CIE diagram (for example,) you can reproduce any color inside of a triangle defined by a set of primary colors as the vertices, with any other set of primaries, given the color being reproduced lies within both triangles.
There is an identified sex-linked gene that gives some percentage of women 4 sets of cones, much as another gene gives some men but two cones (the trit- and deuteranopes.) Now we add the blended retinas, we have a range of men with 2 to 3 cones, and women with 3 to 4 cones, so yes! Many women are better at color than most men. There are outliers, of course.
[edited for grammar and factual clarification]