Jump to content Canada-English
HP.com Canada home Products and Services Support and Drivers Solutions How to Buy
» Contact HP
HP.com Canada home
Everyday Printing   >  Ink, toner & paper essentials

Lab legends

The story of HP ink
» 

Home & Home Office

»

Everyday Printing

» Printer buying guide
» Printing tips & how-tos
» Ink, toner & paper
»

Digital Photography

»

Everyday Computing

»

Digital Entertainment

»

Activity Centre

Browse & Buy

»

Shop Hpshopping.ca

»

Rebate Center

Product Support

»

Support & troubleshooting

»

Software & Drivers

»

Warranties & services

»

Register your product

Content starts here
floor of a library showing the bottom rack of bookshelves filled with books
Genuine HP ink cartridges #1  in reliability based on an independent study. Learn more

Think ink is just ink? HP chemists have created inks that produce millions of intricate colors designed to keep your photos looking vivid and fresh for years to come.

With hundreds of patents in ink chemistry, and more than 100 unique inks unveiled in the past 20 years, the research and development teams at HP “get” ink.

Only quality ingredients

Since ink interacts with every part of the printing system—cartridge, printer, and paper—it must be carefully formulated to produce true-to-life photos that resist fading for generations*.


  • HP uses dyes for color vibrancy because they dissolve completely in water, unlike pigments. This keeps your whole printing system running reliably for years.
  • Your photo memories are destined to last and last, thanks to HP's research and testing of all the factors that try to limit the lifetime of your photographs. To keep your memories safe, we've co-developed brand-new colorants to resist fading better than our previous inks—while still providing the vivid, sharp, exciting photo quality you expect from HP.
  • Purity matters. Impurities in concentrations as small as 0.001 percent can reduce image quality and clog printheads. HP Vivera inks are produced using advanced filtration systems and clean manufacturing technologies to maintain a consistently high level of purity for high-quality results time after time.


paint brushes & art supplies laying on a table

Ink demystified

Take an inside look at how HP has revolutionized the inkjet world over the last two decades.

  • Quality ingredients and unique inks are proprietary to HP, and have been engineered to work with HP papers and cartridges.
  • Specially designed "light inks" with specialty dyes add millions of colors to your photos. The competition? Many just dilute their darker inks to produce lighter hues.
  • HP inks produce an entire color spectrum. Innovation and evolution have quickly taken inkjet printing from a few hundred thousand colors with four-ink systems to 72.9 million color combinations with the new eight-ink systems.


two men looking at blueprints

The kings and queens of ink

Our ink chemists are the best in the world. We hold hundreds of patents in ink chemistry, and have rolled out more than 100 different inks in the past 20 years.

  • HP’s band of printing professors has more than 500 years of combined experience in ink design.
  • The ink chemistry is so advanced that the HP team devotes three to five years, and as many as a 1,000 prototype formulations, to perfect each new ink.


And it's not just ink. We own over 9,000 worldwide imaging and printing patents, for everything from cartridges to papers.

*Up to 108 years, based on Wilhelm-Research.com light-fade testing under glass using the HP 97 Tri-color and the HP 99 Photo Inkjet Print Cartridges on HP Premium Plus Photo Papers For more information on additional permanence testing factors, visit http://www.hp.ca/portal/hho/scienceofprinting/premiumplusphoto/index.php 


children playing costumed as king and queen
Printable version
Privacy statement Using this site means you accept its terms Feedback to [placeholder site name]
© 2009 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.