Patent ID: 8994960
Filing Date: 2015-03-31
Classification: H04N

Abstract:
1. An image forming device, comprising: a processor; and a memory storing instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the image forming device to perform as: an image forming unit that is configured to form toner images using toner of a plurality of colors and sequentially transfer the toner images onto a recording surface of a recording medium, thereby forming an image on the recording surface of the recording medium; a rasterizing unit that is configured to receive image data indicative of a desired image containing an object and to rasterize at least part of the received image data that corresponds to the object, thereby generating raster image data indicative of the object; an edge detecting unit that is configured to detect an edge of the object; an edge expansion unit that is configured to execute an edge expansion process on the edge of the object by modifying the raster image data so as to expand at least a first toner layer at the edge by a width of a predetermined number of pixels so that a surface area occupied by the first toner layer is larger than a surface area occupied by a second toner layer along the recording surface, the first toner layer comprising toner of a first color that is transferred first onto the recording surface among the plurality of colors, the second toner layer comprising toner of a second color that is different from the first color, the toner of the second color being transferred onto the recording surface after the toner of the first color, the edge expansion unit generating edge-expanded raster image data through modification of the raster image data, and supplying the edge-expanded raster image data to the image forming unit, thereby causing the image forming unit to form an image represented by the edge-expanded raster image data; and an edge process control unit, the edge process control unit comprising: wherein the raster image data indicates that the first toner layer and the second toner layer should be transferred to a region of the object and no layer of the first toner layer and the second toner layer should be transferred to an outside region of the object, wherein the edge expansion unit is configured to modify the raster image data into the edge-expanded raster image data by adding toner-layer expansion data to the raster image data, the toner-layer expansion data indicating that the first toner layer should be transferred to an expanded edge region that is in the outside region of the object and that is along the edge of the object, the generated edge-expanded raster image data indicating that the first toner layer should be transferred to both the region of the object and the expanded edge region and that the second toner layer should be transferred to the region of the object but should not be transferred to the expanded edge region, wherein the edge-expanded raster image data represents an edge-expanded object that comprises: the first toner layer transferred to both the region of the object and the expanded edge region; and the second toner layer transferred to the region of the object, wherein a size of the edge-expanded object represented by the edge-expanded raster image data is greater than a size of the object represented by the raster image data prior to the modification by the size of the expanded edge region, wherein N number of colors includes the first and the second colors constituting the object, where N is an integer greater than one (1), and wherein the edge expansion unit is configured to execute the edge expansion process by expanding only a toner layer for (N−1) or less number of colors out of the toner layers for all the N number of colors constituting the object.