Patent ID: 7068957

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: an image carrier which is structured to carry an electrostatic latent image on a surface of said image carrier; a toner carrier which rotates in a predetermined direction while carrying toner and transports said toner to an opposed position facing said image carrier; an image forming means which applies a predetermined developing bias upon said toner carrier, causes said toner carried by said toner carrier to move to said image carrier, visualizes said electrostatic latent image with said toner, and forms a toner image; and a timer which measures an elapsed period since an end of formation of a toner image by said image forming means, wherein an image forming operation for forming a toner image corresponding to an image formation request upon receipt of said image formation request by a user, and an optimization for forming a toner image as a patch image, are selectively executed to detect a density of said patch image and to optimize a density control factor influencing an image density based on the result of the detection to control an image density, wherein if said image formation request is not newly received after said elapsed period, measured by said timer, has reached a first predetermined period, said optimization is executed, and wherein if said image formation request is newly received when said elapsed period is shorter than said first predetermined period but is equal to or longer than a second predetermined period which is shorter than said first predetermined period, said image forming operation in response to said image formation request is executed after executing said optimization.