Patent ID: 7290854

Claim:
An ink jet recording method for recording an image in a unit area of a recording medium with a recording head having at least three ejection orifice groups, wherein each of the ejection orifice groups includes a plurality of ejection orifices arrayed in a predetermined direction to eject ink and being arranged in a direction different from the predetermined direction, and wherein the ejection orifice groups are arranged to define a plurality of adjacent ejection orifice groups, the method comprising the steps of: scanning the recording head relative to the unit area a plurality of times; distributing image data corresponding to the unit area to a plurality of scans; and recording the image in the unit area in each of the plurality of scans in accordance with the image data distributed in the distributing step in order to complete the image to be recorded in the unit area, wherein the image data corresponding to each of adjacent ejection orifice groups is distributed to the plurality of scans in the distributing step such that, for all of the plurality of adjacent ejection orifice groups, a recording duty of one ejection orifice group of the adjacent ejection orifice groups is lower than a predetermined threshold in each of the plurality of scans and a recording duty of another ejection orifice group of the adjacent ejection orifice groups is higher than the predetermined threshold in each of the plurality of scans.