Patent ID: 7407258

Claim:
An ink jet recording apparatus on which a recording head is mounted, comprising, a printing means which performs printing of an image by said recording head based on image data, said recording head having a plurality of nozzles aligned therealong from which ink droplets are ejected to form the image, a preliminary on-paper ejection means which performs a preliminary ejection during printing of the image at least one time onto paper with respect to each of all the nozzles of said recording head every predetermined period, according to a predetermined preliminary on-paper ejection pattern, said predetermined period being equal to or less than one third of allowable exposure time of each of said nozzles, an ejected/non-ejected detecting means which detects whether or not an ejection has been performed within each of said predetermined period with respect to each nozzle, and a control means which sets said preliminary on-paper ejection pattern as valid in a next predetermined period subsequent to said predetermined period only for a nozzle determined as non-ejected in said ejected/non-ejected detecting means, and which transfers to said printing means print data generated based on both said preliminary ejection pattern set as valid and said image data.