Patent ID: 7658487

Claim:
A controller that controls a liquid drop ejecting device including a first head at which a plurality of first liquid drop ejectors, which eject first liquid drops containing a coloring material, are arrayed, and a second head at which a plurality of second liquid drop ejectors, which eject second liquid drops that cause components of the first liquid drops to thicken, cohere or become insoluble, are arrayed, longitudinal directions of the first and second heads are generally orthogonal to a sheet conveyance direction, and the first and second heads are full width array heads that extend over generally a full width of a recording medium, the controller comprising: a scanning control section that controls scanning such that, among the first head and the second head, at least the first head scans a plurality of times relative to a corresponding identical region and no other region of a recording medium during said plurality of scans, wherein a first scan is a scan before any other scans of said corresponding identical region and a second scan is a scan that directly follows said first scan; and an ejection control section that controls ejecting of the first head and the second head such that, among the plurality of times of scanning, a proportion of an applied amount, per unit surface area, of the second liquid drops onto the recording medium with respect to an applied amount, per unit surface area, of the first liquid drops onto the recording medium in said first scan is greater than or equal to 0 and less than or equal to a first value, the proportion from said second scan on is greater than or equal to a second value and less than or equal to 1, and the proportion in the first scan is smaller than the proportion from the second scan on; wherein the controller is applied to the liquid drop ejecting device in which a recording medium is conveyed and the heads are fixed while a printing process is performed, wherein the corresponding identical region of the recording medium is a region to be scanned with one or more defective ejectors in the first liquid drop ejectors, and the ejection control is carried out only at the corresponding identical region and other regions of the recording medium are scanned only once by the first and second heads.