Patent ID: 7493073

Claim:
An image forming apparatus, comprising: an image forming section which transfers toner onto a latent image due to a difference of electrostatic potential to form a toner image; a transfer section which transfers the toner image onto a recording material directly or via an intermediate transfer body; a fixing section which passes the recording material on which the toner image is transferred between a fixing rotation body and a pressurizing member contacted and pressed to each other, and heats and pressurizes to fix the toner image; and an image amount detection section which previously detects an amount of an image area where the toner is to be transferred to form the toner image based on input image information, wherein the image forming section forms an image pattern with high toner area coverage after a predetermined number of the toner images are transferred, the predetermined number based on the amount of the image area where the toner is to be transferred detected by the image amount detection section, and the fixing section fixes the image pattern with the high toner area coverage transferred onto a recording material, and the predetermined number of the toner image transferred before forming the image pattern with the high toner area coverage is set to a first number of sheets of paper passing through the fixing section when the amount of area where the toner is to be transferred detected by the image amount detection section is less than a threshold amount and a second number of sheets of paper passing through the fixing section when the amount of the image area where the toner is to be transferred is greater than the threshold amount, with the second number of sheets being greater than the first number of sheets.