Edible ink for printers is engineered to work with the designated inkjet printhead technology. There are very precise requirements, not just for color, but for quality for edible ink to be properly jetted through a printer. These properties/requirements include thickness of the droplets (which can affect both clogging and airflow disturbances from print head movement), and ink viscosity (which can affect ejection volumes and ink dot placements), for example. Color matching is also critical. When it comes to airbrush ink, there is no significant hardware technology standards to meet, so its more focused on just color and some viscosity considerations. Another difference is that edible printer ink is a lot more concentrated than your typical edible airbrush ink. You can put edible printer ink into an airbrush, but you can't put airbrush edible ink into a printer.