Patent ID: 8877419

Claim:
A method of forming a composite color image, comprising: electrically charging a latent image-holding member; exposing the charged latent image-holding member to light to form an electrostatic latent image; developing the electrostatic latent image with a two-component developer containing toner particles of one color and a carrier to form a toner image on the latent image-holding member; primarily transferring the toner image from the latent image-holding member to an intermediate transfer member; repeating the electrically charging, the exposing, the developing, and the primarily transferring, while the toner particles are replaced with toner particles of different color, to form a composite color image on the intermediate transfer member; and secondarily transferring the composite color image from the intermediate transfer member to a recording medium, wherein the carrier comprises: magnetic substance core particles that are inorganic particles having surface roughness, or mean spacing between protrusions, Sm of from 0.5 μm to 2.0 μm and surface roughness, or arithmetic average roughness, Ra of from 0.1 μm to 0.8 μm and a coating layer that is made of a resin and that coats the surface of each of the magnetic substance core particles that are inorganic particles at a coating content of from 3 to 10 percent by mass relative to the total mass of the magnetic substance core particles that are inorganic particles, the carrier has a degree of circularity of 0.970 or more, the intermediate transfer member is a belt that has a substrate whose Young's modulus is in the range of from 3,000 to 6,500 MPa, during the primary transferring, primary transfer nip pressure is in the range of from 8 to 20 gf/cm, and a value (T/P) obtained by dividing a primary transfer current value T by a processing speed P is in the range of from 0.08 to 0.18 μA.sec/mm, and the processing speed P is 165 mm/sec or more.