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It seems difficult for even physicists to wrap their head around this idea that color and brightness do not exist outside of the mind. It seems to take a certain type of wiring in a persons brain to understand this. Many physics websites do not explain this correctly and many simply do not address it from the point of view of it being a "perception". Most websites about the EM spectrum and human eyes do not take our perceptions into account for simplicity's sake as that is not what they are trying to convey or explain. I've never seen a science website about visible EM spectrum radiation that even takes into account the fact that brightness and color is only a perception of the mind. Try looking up "brightness perception", "color perception" or "color qualia" for more information.

Most people simply don't get it. I'll attempt to explain from my own view.

First a note about "wording". I will refer to "light" as "invisible radiation from the Sun or any other emitting source". Noting that Light itself contains no brightness or color. Light waves are simply "unperceived radiation".
2nd - I will refer to Brightness as the "brightness" we perceive from a light source. Noting that "light" radiation does not contain brightness as a property.
3rd Rod and cone receptors in our eyes have been discussed so I'll not get into that in detail.

Radiation from the Sun when not perceived by a living being is completely "invisible". Without eyes and a brain to perceive color and brightness the universe looks like what our leg would "see", which is nothing. No brightness, darkness or color.

This radiation from the Sun causes Photosynthesis to occur in plants. Objects like rocks also retain heat from this radiation. This solar radiation is visually undetectable without eyes and a mind to perceive it. Noting that we can also feel it as a perception of heat.

When we look towards a light source the only thing our eyes receive are "invisible" fragments of radiation that contain no brightness or color.

Our eyes and mind process those "invisible" fragments of information into brightness and color. Different wavelengths are interpreted into different colors and brightness's. When we look at the Sun many of our rods detect and many cones fire giving the appearance of varying degrees of brightness. When we look at the Sun we are effectively looking at "all colors combined" from one end of the human visual spectrum to the other so it appears "bright".

The images we perceive as the world and universe only exist in the mind. It "plays" in our mind similar to a movie or a dream. Our eyes are not "windows" that we look through to view reality. Our visual perception of reality is: our eyes and minds ability to convert "invisible fragments of radiation" into brightness and color images that only exist in our mind.

Note: I'm not saying what we perceive is not there at all. Since we perceive our world via several senses I take it on faith that the solid objects we perceive are actually there. However Color and Brightness are not properties of the natural universe. They are 100% a "dream-like" image that "plays" in our mind. How this occurs in our mind "as far as I know" is currently unknown. It's a totally amazing process. I assume it's an evolutionary process as that is currently our best hypothesis or theory.

I think our sense of "feeling/touch" is our most basic sense. I think it's the most reliable. I have faith that the objects we can feel or touch do exist. This includes the moon because we've been there. It includes the Sun, stars and planets because we have good evidence that they exist.

Note: My perceived reality does not include gods, fairies, ghost, spirits, an afterlife existence, leprechauns or various monsters that people claim to perceive. I can't justify the existence of something without good evidence of it. Visual and auditory hallucinations are so common that it's considered normal by the psychiatry field to have them. This is what I attribute to the perception of some people that believe they "see and/or hear" gods, spirits, ghost, monsters and experience things like alien abductions. It's simply my view that such perceptions are phantom productions of the mind. The information that actually enters our eyes and mind is actually very little. Most of what we perceive is a construction of our mind. It's known that our minds are fully capable of constructing realities that are false. I assume that such false illusionary realities would be disjointed and confusing.

If I see Santa and his reindeer land on my roof I'm not going to run to tell the world about it. I'm going to have someone drive me to the hospital to see what's wrong with me. My rational thinking mind can differentiate between something real and something that is an illusion of the mind. I can understand how people with some type brain defect may not be able to understand the difference. I imagine schizophrenia would be very disjointed and confusing. Just a guess. I've never been there.

I would love to hear your replies. Please don't nit pick about semantics too much. I do understand that semantics is an issue and hopefully you can realize when it is. For example; the word "light" can be interpreted in different ways.