Black Ink On A Colorful Document?

A reader sent me an email today in which he wondered if, by using a small color logo on a document, he had accidentally wasted his color ink. A friend had told him that as soon as he used any color on the page, the rest of the page would be printed with the color ink as well -- even though the rest of it was black. Which, as he quite rightly pointed out, would be an expensive waste of color ink.

A few years ago, his friend would have been right. Color inkjets used to be capable of using only one cartridge at a time, so users would switch from a black cartridge to a color cartridge, depending on whether you wanted color in your document or not. If you had a color cartridge in your machine, and was printing black text, the printer would mix the color to create black.

However, this wasn't a very useful solution. Not only was it a waste, but black ink created by a mix of colored inks is muddy, and never as pure a black as you'd want. Luckily, printer manufacturers were able to develop printers that were capable of using more than one cartridge at a time, and so users no longer had to play switch-the-cartridge all the time.

So now, even if you have color graphics in your document, the printer will use the black ink for text. Which is better for both your document and your pocketbook.