Patent ID: 7681975

Claim:
A printing device that prints an image by forming a dot formation pattern on a printing medium in accordance with image data of a printing object using a printing head that includes a plurality of nozzles each being capable of forming dots to the printing medium, the printing device comprising: an image data acquisition unit that acquires the image data showing pixel values of M (M≧2) for the image; a dot formation pattern data storage unit that stores banding avoiding dot formation pattern data for forming a dot formation pattern for banding avoidance use that includes the dots each being correlated to information about any of the nozzles relating to a banding problem; a printing data generation unit that generates printing data as a result of converting the image data into dot formation pattern data for use of forming a printing image of the image data on the printing medium; and a printing unit that prints, based on the printing data, the printing image of the image data onto the printing medium using the printing head, wherein based on the image data, and the dot formation pattern data stored in the dot formation pattern data storage unit, the printing data generation unit generates the printing data by replacing data in the image data about the dots taken charge by the nozzle relating to the banding problem with the banding avoiding dot formation pattern data for the nozzle, for a predetermined dithering level, the dot formation pattern data storage unit stores a group of the banding avoiding dot formation pattern data each including data about a dot formation pattern, the printing data generation unit replaces the dot formation pattern data with two or more of the dot formation pattern data selected from the group of the dot formation pattern data, and the group of the dot formation pattern data is of the same pattern size but of different dot formation details, such that, for representation of a specific dithering level, the group of the dot formation pattern data share the same number of dots and area size for dot formation but are different only in dot formation position.