Epson 114 ink set, 6 colours (compatible)

Pigment black is the tank text comes out of. Pigment ink is made of solid particles that sit on top of the paper instead of soaking into it, and that is exactly what keeps letters on ordinary printer paper sharp rather than fuzzy. It is also the only ink in this printer that dries water resistant.

Photo black is dye ink and does the exact opposite of pigment black: it soaks into the paper. On glossy and matt photo paper that gives a far deeper black, without the dull haze pigment leaves on such a surface.

Cyan is the hardest working of the six in photographic work. Sky, water, daylight shadows and every green tone lean on it, which is why this and magenta are usually the bottles you refill most often.

Magenta carries skin tones, sunsets and anything heading for red or purple. On a portrait it is the colour that shows up fastest when something is off, because the eye recognises a wrong skin tone immediately.

Yellow touches the whole sheet in photographic work, because nearly every natural colour has yellow in it: greens, skin tones, wood and sand. As a colour on its own you rarely see it; as a missing colour you see it everywhere.

Grey is the tank that separates this printer from an ordinary four-colour machine. Without a grey ink a printer has to fake light grey tones by spacing black dots further apart, which shows as grain and often as a colour cast in what should be neutral.