Human perception of color varies between individuals, raising the question of how well the standard color matching functions (CMFs) represent individual observers in image reproduction. The goal of this research is to explore the relationship between CMFs and both fidelity and preference in the image reproduction pipeline. Three experiments were conducted: an experiment to estimate approximately individualized CMFs, an image fidelity experiment, and an image preference experiment. The results show that the CMFs influence the accuracy of image reproduction, however, preferences are affected by factors in addition to CMFs. The findings offer insights into the limitations and potential implications of relying on using standard CMFs in image reproduction technologies.