Patent ID: 8553242

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising a control section which detects an offset of a recording sheet being conveyed in a main scanning direction perpendicular to a conveyance direction of the recording sheet; performs an offset regulation control which adjusts a main scanning direction image area signal which represents an image area in the main scanning direction in accordance with the offset; forms a patch at a non-transfer area where image to be transferred to the recording sheet is not formed on an image carrier; and controls an image forming condition by reading the patch by a sensor, wherein the control section performs a first control which generates a main scanning direction image area signal for adjusting the offset of the recording sheet at an image transferring area where image is transferred to the image recording sheet while a sub scanning direction image area signal which represents an image area in a sub scanning direction perpendicular to the main scanning direction is active and forms the image to be transferred to the recording sheet at the image transferring area on the image carrier in accordance with the adjusted main scanning direction image area signal, and performs a second control which generates a main scanning direction image area signal for performing the offset regulation control according to a fixed value and forms the patch at a non-transfer area on the image carrier in accordance with the adjusted main scanning direction image area signal at the non-transfer area while sub scanning direction image area signal is inactive.