Patent ID: 7885556

Claim:
An image forming apparatus, comprising: an image carrier that carries an electrostatic latent image; a transfer belt facing the image carrier; a developing device that develops the electrostatic latent image on the image carrier with a developer that contains toner to obtain a toner image; a toner-amount detecting unit that detects an amount of toner of the toner image, the toner-amount detecting unit disposed at a position proximate to the transfer belt at a downstream side of the image carrier; a toner-density detecting unit that detects a density of toner in the developer, the toner-density detecting unit disposed adjacent to the developing device; and a process control unit configured to perform a process of determining a corrected toner-density target value, indicative of a target value of density of toner in the developer, based on the amount of toner detected by the toner-amount detecting unit and the density of toner detected by the toner-density detecting unit, and determines an execution timing of the toner-density target value correction process based on a development value, wherein the development value is derived, in part, based on the amount of toner detected by the toner-amount detecting unit.