Patent ID: 8678548

Claim:
An image recording apparatus which records an image on a recording medium, the apparatus comprising: a recording head which records the image to a recording surface of the recording medium; a scanning mechanism which makes the recording head scan along a scanning direction; a recording direction deciding unit which decides a recording direction along which the recording head scans with respect to the recording surface of the recording medium to record the image, from a first direction along the recording surface and a second direction intersecting with the first direction and along the recording surface; a changing unit which changes one of the scanning direction of the recording head and a direction of the recording medium to bring the recording direction with respect to the recording surface decided by the recording direction deciding unit and the scanning direction of the recording head in line; and a controller which is configured to: control the scanning mechanism so that scanning speed of the recording head is constant in each of scanning passes required for recording the image; and decide the scanning speed of the recording head based on a resolution of the image so that the scanning speed is lowered as the resolution of the image is increased; wherein the recording direction deciding unit calculates a first recording time taken for recording the entire image when the first direction is set as the recording direction and a second recording time taken for recording the entire image when the second direction is set as the recording direction, based on image data of the image to be recorded on the recording surface of the recording medium; and wherein the recording direction deciding unit decides the first direction as the recording direction when the first recording time is shorter than the second recording time, and decides the second direction as the recording direction when the second recording time is shorter than the first recording time; wherein, under a condition that there are a first area having a first resolution and a second area having a second resolution which is higher than the first resolution in one scanning pass. the controller is configured to decide the scanning speed of the recording head for the one scanning pass based on only the second resolution of the second area, and, wherein the controller is configured to decide the speed based on the first resolution of the first area under the condition that only the first area is recorded in one scanning pass.