Patent ID: 7384114

Claim:
An ink jet recording apparatus comprising: an ink jet head having a pressure chamber with an ink held therein, an ink jet nozzle communicating with the pressure chamber, and an actuator configured to deform the pressure chamber according to a drive signal; translating means for allowing a tone value corresponding to the concentration of a print pixel to be translated to a pattern which controls the number of times corresponding to the jetting of each of a plurality of kinds of ink droplet sizes, said translating means having a plurality of patterns corresponding to each tone value; and drive signal generating means for generating a drive signal for allowing the pressure chamber to be deformed by the actuator based on the pattern and an ink droplet of said plurality of kinds of ink droplet sizes to be jetted from a corresponding nozzle, wherein, when an assumed jet volume of said pattern is given by the following expression ∑ i = 1 N ⁢ Vi × Ki where N is the number of kinds of ink droplets; Vi is a jet volume corresponding to the singly jetting of the ink droplet in an i-th number of kinds of ink droplet sizes; and Ki is the number of times corresponding to the jetting of the ink droplet in the i-th number of kinds of ink droplet sizes by the pattern, the concentration of the pixel corresponding to a first tone value is set smaller than the concentration of the pixel corresponding to a second tone value following the first tone value and the assumed jet volume of a pattern corresponding to the first tone value is set greater than the assumed jet volume of a pattern corresponding to the second tone value.