Patent ID: 7292798

Claim:
An image-forming device comprising: a conveying member conveying a recording medium in a relative movement direction with respect to an image-forming unit; the image-forming unit performing an image-forming operation, the image-forming unit comprising: a photosensitive member; a charging unit that charges the photosensitive member; an exposing unit that forms an electrostatic latent image on the photosensitive member; a developing unit that develops the electrostatic latent image on the photosensitive member into a visible developer image by using a developer agent on the photosensitive member; and a transferring unit that transfers the developer image from the photosensitive member to a transfer member at a predetermined transfer position, the transfer member being either one of the recording medium and the conveying member; and a control unit that performs an operation to determine image-forming conditions, the control unit comprising: a test pattern forming unit that forms a developer image of a test pattern on the transfer member by controlling the image-forming unit to perform an image forming operation to form an electrostatic latent image of the test pattern at a part of the photosensitive member, to develop the electrostatic latent image of the test pattern into a visible developer image of the test pattern, and to transfer the developer image of the test pattern onto the transfer member at its test-image-forming region, a non-test-image-forming region being defined on the transfer member at a location that is different from the test-image-forming region; a ghost image detecting unit that detects at least a part of the non-test-image-forming region of the transfer member; and an image-forming condition setting unit that sets image-forming conditions for at least one of the charging unit, the exposing unit, the developing unit, and the transferring unit based on detection results by the ghost image detecting unit, wherein the non-test-image-forming region corresponds to at least a part of the photosensitive member that includes the part of the photosensitive member, on which the test pattern has been formed, wherein the test pattern forming unit forms the non-test-image-forming region on the transfer member by controlling the exposing unit to form no electrostatic latent image on the at least a part of the photosensitive member including the part of the photosensitive member, on which the test pattern has been formed, after controlling the exposing unit to form the electrostatic latent image of the test pattern on the part of the photosensitive member.