Patent ID: 7303247

Claim:
An ink jet printing method for printing an image of dots on a printing medium by scanning a print head for printing dots, comprising the steps of: selecting a dot arrangement pattern determining a presence/absence of dots in multiple areas that constitute a pixel, in accordance with a density value for each of multiple pixels; distributing print dot data based on the dot arrangement pattern selected in said selecting step to multiple scans of the print head by a mask pattern, and generating print dot data corresponding to each of the multiple scans; and printing dots using the print head in accordance with the generated print dot data, wherein the mask pattern is the sum of a first mask pattern and a second mask pattern, the first mask pattern corresponding to a first location that includes areas wherein dots are to be printed even if the density value is smaller than a predetermined value, and a second mask pattern having a characteristic differing from that of the first mask pattern and corresponding to a second location that includes areas wherein dots are to be printed only when the density value is equal to or greater than the predetermined value.