Color theory defining the CMY primaries as substances that "absorbed" only one of the retinal primary colors: cyan absorbs only red (−R+G+B), magenta only green (+R−G+B), and yellow only blue violet (+R+G−B). It is important to add that the CMYK, or process, color printing is meant as an economical way of producing a wide range of colors for printing, but is deficient in reproducing certain colors, notably orange and slightly deficient in reproducing purples. A wider range of color can be obtained with the addition of other colors to the printing process, such as in Pantone's Hexachrome printing ink system (six colors),
Carolina blue due to contrast issues and section 509 web requirements. Oddly enough none of the colors match the selected Pantone 542 which would be a hex value of , RGB of (102,153,194), and a cmyk value of 47,21,0,24. The North Carolina Tar Heels athletics department has their own formulation for Carolina blue. Carolina athletics blue has the same CMYK color representation as the university's version of Carolina blue, but the RGB representation for Carolina athletics blue is Red 123, Green 175, and Blue 212. This results in a Hex code of , the official matching hex code for Pantone 542 C.