Shades of blue pigment blue, is the tone of blue that is achieved by mixing process (printer's) cyan and process (printer's) magenta in equal proportions. It is displayed at right. The purpose of the CMYK color system is to provide the maximum possible gamut of color reproducible in printing by the use of only three primaries. The color indicated is only approximate as the colors of printing inks may vary. The color defined as "blue" in the NCS or Natural Color System is an azure-like color shown at right (NCS 2060-B). The Natural Color System is a color system based on the four
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.