I agree to an extent, but light is invisible. Colors are a frequency phenomenon and the same property in both instances.

Part of the art of mixing and matching paints for cars is abstracting the various spaces and focusing on each. I need to see the flat tone, opacity, coarseness and composition (metallics/pearls), layering (pearls), flop (how the color changes depending on facet angles and tint the tone of this independent of the perpendicular tone).

I’m unusual in this space as well. I specialized in very small repairs where I am mixing paints in much smaller batches than the minimum recipe supplied by the paint vendor for the original color code of the vehicle. I knew paints on a much deeper level where I mixed mostly by eye and intuition. I had many techniques, but overall, I had to know the tinting properties of around a hundred different colors and how each one would behave in combination with the rest. My skills were very much a matter of flattening my perspective and observing three dimensional colors as if they were a two dimensional abstraction with several little 2d bubble universe facets to play with.

It is a learned skill. I hired several employees over the years. It quickly becomes evident how a person thinks and their ability to see color on a level that most humans never encounter. Even now, I still know that white and black do not exist and are simply byproducts of other colors and properties. True black would be impossible to see, and white would be a blinding light source specifically tailored to the individual’s vision spectrum and neural processing. I see colors and complex properties in everything.