I simply asked for an objective demonstration of this process, this dazzling that Photoshop is capable of that tilts our senses on their side and takes us over with rapture.

The fact is, the images were made in the color space of nature. The limitation was precisely the latitude of the plates when exposed to light which had been band-pass filtered to allow red, green and blue light to pass. What the precise details of those filters and the respective sensitivity of the plates to those spectra are, I can't say. Obviously it was panchromatic or we wouldn't have a red channel.

Here's an image which shows how snugly the sRGB color space fits within the real of visual perception.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Colorspace.png

It sure is cozy in there.

What we have in front of us is still an approximation of the colors of nature and that we can perceive.

Here's some samples of fluorescent paint

http://www.goldenpaints.com/products/color/fluorescent/fluor...

Now I don't know anything the history of fluorescent paint and whether it was around in Prokudin-Gorksy's lifetime. But I know for certain he could have seen it if it had and noticed its intensity.

I hope you notice that the photographs of the paint on the website are not themselves fluorescent. This is because we can perceive colors that the screen can't show, even if you have the latest Cinema Display.

Also, go online and look up some gold or copper. Then look at the real thing. Good luck getting the computer to produce that color.

Fact is, producing these colors is hard, and done with spot color when printing. That doesn't make it outside the realm of perception.

What you're basically arguing is that the film couldn't have possibly captured the colors we see here, and that they were invented by the restoration process.

So, I'll ask again for quantification. This is the digital realm we're discussing. What I'm not asking for is the quantification of taste or feeling, or even of perception, in spite of this discussion. There are so hard numbers underneath all of this. It would be interesting to see a side-by-side comparison of the same image with the pixels that are impossible in this alleged early 20th century color space highlighted.

However, I think you've successfully moved the goalposts past what we are capable of knowing directly. By alleging that these 16-bit TIFF grayscale images created in the scanning process are themselves heavily manipulated, we have come to a stopping point. There's no way I can get my hands on the originals in order to ascertain whether you are correct. (However note that the images were scanned is grayscale, perhaps using sGray as the color model, is it the fact that you also assert that sGray contains more colors than Prokudin-Gorksy could have perceived or captured on his plates?)

Aside from your clever dismissal of the "original" as far as we are able to obtain it, the 16-bit color-separated TIFFs, is it possible at all to bring these images into a computer and respect their original "limited" nature and bring that presentation to a computer screen? Because if it is not, then what is the point?

Your assertion that we are in love with Photoshop, not the work itself is basically moot. What you are offering up as an explanation of the compelling content of the work is in fact so commonplace as to encompass all of digital media. The powers granted Photoshop in this discussion to smudge the original color working space into realms impossible in the original are in fact so pervasive that to draw them out in this discussion is merely an excuse to talk about your pet theories about digital media and have nothing whatever to do with this work under discussion.