Patent ID: 7728858

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: an image carrier; a toner image forming unit that uses a developer containing a toner and forms a toner image on the image carrier surface, the toner being given color information and a color-generation state or non-color-generation state of the toner being controlled; an intermediate transfer medium that the toner image formed on the image carrier is transferred to; a first transfer unit that transfers the toner image formed on the image carrier surface to the intermediate transfer medium surface; a color-generation information giving unit that directly gives color-generation information to the toner image transferred to the intermediate transfer medium; a second transfer unit that transfers the toner image transferred to the intermediate transfer medium surface to a recording medium; a fixing unit that fixes the toner image transferred to the recording medium surface; and a color generating unit that causes color generation in the toner image on the recording medium that the color-generation information is given, wherein the fixing unit is the color generating unit.