Patent ID: 7646500

Claim:
An image formation assisting device that processes a printing job to produce image data of respective pages and transfers a processed image data to an image forming apparatus, the image data being dependent on a configuration of the image forming apparatus, the device comprising: a memory that stores the image data of a large size that is processed independently of a processing characteristic of the image forming apparatus and is allocated for a press plate; an output mode information acquisition section that receives information related to an output mode desired by a client; a detection section that detects allocation information related to an allocation position on the basis of the information related to the output mode acquired by the output mode information acquisition section; an image processor that electronically edits the image data of a large size so as to be divided into appropriate sizes on the basis of the allocation information detected by the detection section; and a printing control section for controlling an image processing section in such a way that a print sequence information on an image forming order depending from the image forming apparatus is acquired from the image forming apparatus, and the image data acquired by the image processing section is subjected to rearranging according to the print sequence, and the rearranged image data is sent to the image forming apparatus.