Patent ID: 7133178

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: a laser emitter for emitting a laser beam to irradiate a surface of a photosensitive member; a reflector, disposed at a position on a laser beam path defined by the laser emitter and the photosensitive member, for reflecting the laser beam emitted by the laser emitter to direct the reflected laser beam to the surface of the photosensitive member; a driver for reciprocatively moving the reflector in such a manner that the laser beam travels along a scanning line on the surface of the photosensitive member in a direction for scanning; a resolution designation acceptor for accepting a designation on a resolution for image formation, the resolution being a low resolution and a high resolution having a resolution twice as large as the low resolution; and an emission controller for controlling the laser emitter to selectively emit the laser beam along the predetermined scanning line in a forward direction or the predetermined scanning line in a backward direction defined by the movement of the reflector by the driver if the resolution designation acceptor accepts the low resolution as the resolution for image formation, and for controlling the laser emitter to emit the laser beam both along the scanning line in the forward direction and the scanning line in the backward direction if the resolution designation acceptor accepts the high resolution as the resolution for image formation.