Color is perceived by the human eye in a conceptually straightforward way.
In our retina there are miniature organs called cones and rods. In fact, the red cone has some sensitivity to wavelengths shorter than even the blue cone can see. Color photography and television attempt to stimulate our color perception by using narrow wavelength bands which exploit the regions where a typical human viewer has a large sensitivity difference in their cones. Because of this strategy, photographs often appear too colorful when compared to the real world they're meant to capture. While these problems with monitors and photographs are somewhat minor, large problems in reproduction can occur when the colors in the real world come from a narrow range of wavelengths.