Patent ID: 7679775

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: an orientation setting part configured to set a readable horizontal or vertical document orientation, which enables a user of the image forming apparatus to readily read and understand an image on the document when carrying out an image forming process to form the image on a recording medium; a folding direction setting part configured to set a folding direction in which a Z-fold of the recording medium is to be made after the image forming process; and a Z-fold part configured to form the Z-fold on the recording medium, based on the readable orientation and the folding direction, wherein the Z-fold part, when forming the Z-fold on a plurality of recording media with respect to documents having mixed sizes, rotates document data read from a first document based on the document orientation set by the orientation setting part and the folding direction set by the folding direction setting part, and rotates document data read from a document other than the first document based on a main scanning width of the recording medium on which the document data of the first document is formed and a main scanning width or a sub scanning width of the document data read from the document other than the first document, and wherein the Z-fold part outputs the document data read from the first document on a recording medium elongated in a horizontal direction after rotating the document data in a predetermined direction, if the first document is elongated in a vertical direction, the document orientation is set to the horizontal direction by the orientation setting part, and the folding direction is set to a bottom-fold by the folding direction setting part; and the Z-fold part outputs the document data read from the first document on a recording medium elongated in the horizontal direction after rotating the document data in a predetermined direction and folds a longer side of the recording medium by a right-fold, if the first document is elongated in the horizontal direction, the document orientation is set to the vertical direction by the orientation setting part, and the folding direction is set to a right-fold by the folding direction setting part.