Patent ID: 8185020

Claim:
An image forming apparatus, comprising: a developing device which is adapted to contain a liquid developer including a nonvolatile carrier liquid, fine pigment particles dispersed in the carrier liquid and thermoplastic fine resin particles dispersed in the carrier liquid, and to develop an electrostatic latent image into a visible image with the liquid developer, the pigment particles and the fine resin particles being charged to a same charging polarity, wherein the fine pigment particles are different from the thermoplastic fine resin particles and not one of the fine pigment particles forms a part of a particle with any one of the thermoplastic fine resin particles; a squeezing mechanism which is adapted to remove a part of the carrier liquid included in the visible image formed by the developing device; and a transferring mechanism which is adapted to transfer the visible image, from which the part of the carrier liquid has been removed by the squeezing mechanism, onto a recording medium, wherein the fine resin particles in the carrier liquid are positioned between the fine pigment particles in the carrier liquid so that the amount of carrier liquid among the fine resin particles and the fine pigment particles of the visible image present after the visible image is squeezed by the squeezing mechanism is reduced when compared to the squeezing of the visible image when fine resin particles are not used.