What Color is My Whiskey?

Do these three whiskies look the same color?

Here in real life, the middle and right appear exactly the same color which is markedly less amber than the right (they are the Macallan 12 and two glasses of my 18 day old, respectively). Yet in this picture they look like three different colors to me. If photos can't be trusted, how best to communicate the color of my whiskey?

Of course the enterprising folks at Whisky Magazine had this problem before I and developed a color bar:

 Does this really help, though? I'm sure we can all agree that Old Oak is not the same color as Jonquiripe Corn, but what color is Macallan 12? Held against the light it looks Chestnut/Oloroso Sherry, but against the wall it looks Tawny. So now we have to standardize our light sources? What about the dimensions of the volume of whisky?

Surely other industries have solved this problem, right? Chemical engineers need quality control for colored products, and artists are better at talking about color than most people. Can anyone provide some insight in the comments?

Speaking of color, I learned to my dismay that Scotch whisky can legally contain E150A caramel coloring. Obviously caramel color comes naturally from the aging process, as we're seeing here at home, but distilleries are allowed to add artificial coloring for whatever reasons. I'm assuming these are mostly quality control across batches. Here are some grizzly details.