Patent ID: 7457568

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: an image carrier structured to carry an electrostatic latent image on its surface; a liquid developer carrier which transports liquid developer toward a development position facing the image carrier while carrying the liquid developer on its surface, the liquid developer with toner dispersed in a carrier liquid; and an image forming unit which applies a developing bias to the liquid developer carrier for causing the toner in the liquid developer on the liquid developer carrier to adhere to the image carrier, thereby developing the electrostatic latent image with the toner to form a toner image; and a density detector which detects a density of the toner image formed by the image forming unit, wherein the image forming unit forms a patch image as the toner image under an image forming condition in which an adhesion amount of toner to the image carrier is substantially saturated relative to an increase of contrast potential, and wherein a toner density in the liquid developer is determined based on the density of the patch image detected by the density detector.