Patent ID: 8626040

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: a plurality of image forming stations each including at least a developing unit and a photosensitive element, the image forming stations forming an image forming engine; a transfer medium to which toner images visualized on the respective photosensitive elements by the respective developing units are transferred; and a fixing unit that performs a fixing operation to fix a transferred toner image on the transfer medium to a recording medium, wherein a transparent toner can be used for any of the plurality of image forming stations, wherein the image forming engine performs a plurality of times of toner image transferring on the transfer medium by performing transferring at least one toner image to the transfer medium from at least one of the image forming stations and by performing at least once transferring at least one toner image from at least one of the rest of the image forming stations, whereby the toner images on the transfer medium are formed using a desired number of colors of toner including the transparent toner, and wherein the image forming apparatus further comprises a control unit configured to change automatically or in accordance with a user's selection a transfer order of transferring the transparent toner from the image forming station using the transparent toner and a toner other than the transparent toner from the image forming station not using the transparent toner.