Patent ID: 7623263

Claim:
An inkjet printer, comprising: print data generating means for generating printing data from image data; and a printing mechanism including: a printing head having a plurality of ink nozzles; and a scanning mechanism that moves the printing head to effect scanning of the printing head during printing, wherein the inkjet printer has a monotone printing mode and a color printing mode, an average pass count that is an average value of scan pass counts of the ink nozzles on each scan line are respectively set to 1 or greater for the monotone printing mode and the color printing mode, the average pass count for the monotone printing mode is set to be a larger value than the average pass count for the color printing mode under printing conditions which use an identical print medium and an identical printing resolution for the monotone printing mode and the color printing mode, and wherein the print data generating means includes: scanning method storage means for storing in advance a first scanning method for the monotone printing mode and a second scanning method for the color printing mode, color conversion means for converting the image data to ink amount data using a color conversion lookup table, halftone processing means for generating dot data representing dot formation status at each pixel by executing halftone processing on the ink amount data, and data alignment means for reading out the scanning method from the scanning method storage means according to the printing conditions and to adjust alignment of the dot data according to the read scanning method.