NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover

First of all, I have to say that this is a very thoughtful and useful reply. I've actually re-read it several times now, perhaps because it's given me different ideas each time I've read through.

That Fujifilm link is one of the best justifications I have ever seen to keep an unreasonable number of browser tabs open, hahaha. Aside from realizing that I hate the "Provia" film simulation, there is a lot of meat there... in fact, everything you're touching upon tells me that there is more room for experimentation/fooling around/creativity with our planetary imagery than even I had thought.

In planetary science, "experimenting with color" (OK, "multispectral data") is a learned skill that is actually taught to undergrads nowadays, but it's a lot more mathematical than what Fuji is talking about, and I've never heard anyone (instructors or students) talk about perception and such in the way you're doing here. OK, so I may be extremely bad at art, but nobody can stop me from playing with landscape photos from Mars, and I think I'm going to start. That being said, I think what you're saying should motivate actual visual artists to look at and reproduce their individual visions of this stuff a lot, lot more...