Patent ID: 7963623

Claim:
An ink jet printing apparatus for printing an image on a printing medium by using a printing unit having at least three ejection opening arrays, each ejection opening array having a plurality of ejection openings which eject the same color ink and which are arranged along a first direction, the at least three ejection opening arrays being arranged along a second direction intersecting with the first direction, comprising: a distributing unit configured to distribute image data corresponding to the image to be printed on the printing medium to the at least three ejection opening arrays, with mask patterns corresponding to the at least three ejection opening arrays; a moving unit configured to effect a relative movement between the printing unit and the printing medium in the second direction; and a driving unit configured to drive the printing unit so as to eject ink by the at least three ejection opening arrays in the relative movement based on the image data distributed by said distributing unit, wherein a print permission rate of a mask pattern corresponding to at least one end ejection opening array in the second direction is smaller than the print permission rate of a mask pattern corresponding to at least one non-end ejection opening array in the second direction.