Risograph printers use a soy ink made from vegetable soybean oil. One disadvantage of this soy based ink printing medium is that all paper stock has to be uncoated for the ink to dry and adhere to the paper stock.

Because the process involves real ink like in offset printing, and does not require heat to fix the image on the paper that a photocopier or laser printer does, the output from a risograph can be treated like any offset-printed material. This means that sheets which have been through a risograph may be fed through a laser printer afterwards and vice versa.