Patent ID: 8120634

Claim:
An image forming apparatus which performs printing by transferring a toner image, formed by developing a latent image, onto a recording medium, said apparatus comprising: a latent image carrier, on a surface of which is provided with an effective image region which has a predetermined width in a main scanning direction, and the surface of which is driven in a sub scanning direction which is approximately orthogonal to the main scanning direction; a latent image forming unit, which is structured to scan a scan region corresponding to the effective image region with a light beam from a light source in the main scanning direction by means of a deflection mirror surface which oscillates, and which irradiates the effective image region with a latent-image forming light beam, thereby forming a latent image in the effective image region; and a direction controller which selectively switches, based on information related to print mode, between a reciprocal scan mode in which the latent-image forming light beam reciprocally scans in the main scanning direction and a one-way scan mode in which the latent-image forming light beam scans in one-way in either a first direction in the main scanning direction or a second direction opposite to the first direction, wherein normal toner amount printing of printing using a usual first toner amount, toner saving printing of printing using a second toner amount which is less than the first toner amount, tonal printing of printing a toner image which includes half tone, and binary printing of printing a toner image free from the half tone are provided as the print modes, said latent image forming unit sets a light quantity of the latent-image forming light beam to the same value in either print modes, and said direction controller sets the scan mode, based on the information, to the reciprocal scan mode when the normal toner amount printing is performed, or when tonal printing and the toner saving printing are performed, and sets the scan mode to the one-way scan mode when the binary printing and the toner saving printing are performed.