A pigment dispersion includes a color pigment and a polymeric dispersant having at least one pending chromophore group covalently bound to the polymeric backbone of the polymeric dispersant through a linking group. The at least one pending chromophore group has a molecular weight which is smaller than 85% of the molecular weight of the color pigment; the at least one pending chromophore group occurs as a side group on the polymeric backbone and not as a group in the polymeric backbone itself or occurring solely as an end group of the polymeric backbone; the linking group consists of all the atoms between the polymeric backbone and the first atom of the aromatic group by which the pending chromophore group is linked to the polymeric backbone; and the at least one pending chromophore group has a similarity coefficient SIM of at least 0.75.