I've read that all electrons want to be in their ground state, so when light from a source is absorbed by the electrons in a red colored object and forced the electrons into higher orbital/energy state. The excited electrons would then lose the equal amount of energy it gains earlier so as to go back into ground state, so this same energy is the exact same photon coming from the light source. Since the photon originate from a light source and relay into our eyes with the same amount of energy as initially, what happens if we shine a blue colored laser at the red object?
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The object is red because it absorbs all other wavelengths more than it absorbs red, which gets reflected. The blue and green parts of the spectrum get converted into heat. The process in solids is more complex than in atomic physics because more than a single atom is involved in it, which allows the conversion of light (photons) into phonons (quantized oscillations of the solid's lattice). – CuriousOne, in a comment
