Patent ID: 7978348

Claim:
An imaging device capable of printing images in a plurality of print modes, comprising: an image storage that stores image data subject to be printed; a print mode data storage that stores a plurality of pieces of print mode data corresponding to the plurality of print modes; a consumable substance quantity calculating system that calculates the quantity of consumable substances which would be necessary if images are printed in accordance with the image data stored in the image storage; a print cost calculating system that calculates a plurality of print costs, each print cost being a cost for printing the image data stored in the image storage in one of a plurality of print modes by the imaging device, each of the plurality of print modes having different quantity of consumable substances, and each print cost being calculated based on the quantity of the consumable substances calculated by the consumable substance quantity calculating system; a displaying system that simultaneously displays the plurality of print costs corresponding to the plurality of print modes calculated by the print cost calculating system in association with the plurality of print modes, each print cost being the cost for printing a same image data stored in the image storage in one of the plurality of print modes by the imaging device, and each of the plurality of print modes having the different quantity of consumable substance; a designating system that allows a user to designate one of the plurality of print costs displayed by the displaying system; and a printing system that executes a printing operation in the designated print cost in accordance with the image data stored in the image storage, the printing system including a printer that prints the image data, the printer being capable of printing the image data in different print modes, the printing system executing printing operations under different print modes using the same printer, wherein: each of the print mode data includes weighting factor information defining the quantity of the consumable substances to be used in the corresponding print mode, the weighting factor information includes a black dot weighting factor defining the quantity of the consumable substances used for forming black print dots and a color dot weighting factor defining the quantity of the consumable substances used for forming color print dots; and the image device further comprises a print mode data setting system that allows a user to arbitrarily input the weighting factor information by inputting the quantity of the consumable substances used for forming black print dots and the quantity of the consumable substances used for forming color print dots, respectively, for each of the plurality of print modes.