Ink is a liquid paste containing pigments. Cyan, magenta, yellow, and black are the workhorse colors in the printing world. More sophisticated printers can have up to eight colors, including light cyan, orange, and grey. Each pigment has a rich history behind it. The earliest inks came from materials found in nature, including secretions of octopi, cuttlefish, squid, or tannin from tree bark and nuts. The most famous is purple, or in the printer’s contemporary lexicon magenta. In antiquity it was made from marine snails and boiled for days. It was the color worn by Roman emperors due to its high production costs. Today the origins of pigments are more prosaic, based on chemistry and often closely guarded industrial secrets between commercial rivals. Pigments arrive at the ink manufacturer in powder form, to be added to liquid mediums comprised of water or solvents, binders, and other additives. It is during this wet grinding process that Bühler’s unbeatable duo solutions take center stage.