Patent ID: 7885570

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: a carrier; a forming unit which forms an image on a carrier; a cleaning unit which cleans the carrier; a detection unit which detects a correction pattern formed on the carrier; and a control unit which performs correction processing including causing the cleaning unit to clean a pattern forming region on the carrier, wherein an operation amount of cleaning performed by the cleaning unit is changeable, causing the forming unit to form the correction pattern in the pattern forming region after the cleaning unit has finished cleaning, and correcting an image forming characteristic of the forming unit based on a detection result of the correction pattern detected by the detection unit, wherein, during correction processing, the control unit is capable of performing a position shift correction for correcting a position shift of an image to be formed by the forming unit and a density correction for correcting a density of an image to be formed by the forming unit, and wherein the cleaning unit sets an operation amount of cleaning when the density correction is performed by the control unit to be larger than an operation amount of cleaning when the position shift correction is performed.