Patent ID: 9310745
Filing Date: 2016-04-12
CPC Classification: G03G

Claim Text:
1. An image forming apparatus comprising: a toner image forming unit forming a toner image; and a fixing unit rotating around a central axis extending in a first direction, the fixing unit including a surface fixing the toner image formed based on image information to form the toner image in a rectangular region of a recording medium and transporting the recording medium in a second direction that is perpendicular to the first direction by contacting the recording medium, the toner image forming unit including: the circumference of the surface in a rotation direction is shorter than at least one of the length of the toner image in the first direction and the length of the toner image in the second direction, and the selecting unit divides, using the circumference, a piece of image information representing the toner image into a plurality of pieces of unit image information in the first direction and the second direction, divides each of the plurality of pieces of unit image information into a grid that forms a plurality of division areas to each of which one of different values is assigned depending on the presence or absence of an image to be formed, obtains the integration values by obtaining logical sums of division areas of the plurality of pieces of unit image information along each of the first direction and the second direction, and selects an image formation corresponding to an orientation that corresponds to a smallest one of the integration values, each of the logical sums being obtained from corresponding ones of the division areas of the plurality of pieces of unit image information.