Patent ID: 8761628

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: a computing unit, using a processor, to compute a total amount of toner to be deposited per unit area of a target image to be formed based on image data, in which a first unit area is computed to form a first toner image using a highest total amount of toner, and a second unit area is computed to form a second toner image using a lowest total amount of toner; a heating determination unit that, using the processor, determines, when the highest total amount of toner computed by the computing unit exceeds a given level, whether a first heating amount range enabling fusing of the computed highest total amount of toner and a second heating amount range enabling fusing of the computed lowest total amount of toner have an overlapping portion that can effectively fuse the first toner image and the second toner image, the heating determination unit identifying a heating amount to fuse a toner image of the target image from the overlapping portion that can effectively fuse the first toner image and the second toner image; an image forming unit to form the toner image of the target image on a transfer member by forming the first toner image and the second toner image on the transfer member; a transfer unit to transfer the toner image of the target image formed on the transfer member to a recording medium; a fusing unit to fuse the toner image of the target image, transferred by the transfer unit, on the recording medium using the heating amount determined by the heating determination unit; and a total amount correction unit, wherein, when the first heating amount range and second heating amount range do not have an overlapping portion, the total amount correction unit, using the processor, corrects an amount of the lowest total amount of toner by increasing an amount of the lowest total amount of toner, the lowest total amount of toner is increased to an amount so that the first heating amount range and a corrected second heating amount range corresponding to the corrected lowest total amount of toner have an overlapping portion, wherein the heating determination unit determines the heating amount to fuse the toner image of the target image from the overlapping portion of the first heating amount range and the corrected second heating amount range, wherein the image forming unit forms the toner image of the target image in view of the corrected lowest total amount of toner, corrected by the total amount correction unit.