Patent ID: 8189212

Claim:
A printing control apparatus comprising: a receiving unit configured to receive a selection of an automatic switching mode or a monochrome mode in a selection of printing modes from a user; a manuscript color determining unit configured to determine whether a manuscript is color or monochrome; a copy-forgery-inhibited pattern image color determining unit configured to determine whether color setting of a copy-forgery-inhibited pattern image is color or monochrome; and a controlling unit configured to control printing such that: in the case where the selection of the automatic switching mode is received, only if the manuscript is determined as a monochrome page and the color setting of the copy-forgery-inhibited pattern image is determined as monochrome, a synthesized result of the manuscript and the copy-forgery-inhibited pattern image is printed in monochrome, and if not, the synthesized result of the manuscript and the copy-forgery-inhibited pattern image is printed in color, and in the case where the selection of the monochrome mode is received, if the color setting of the copy-forgery-inhibited patter image is determined as monochrome, the synthesized result of the manuscript and the copy-forgery-inhibited pattern image is printed in monochrome, and if the color setting of the copy-forgery-inhibited pattern image is determined as color, whether the printing mode is to be changed or not is inquired.