Patent ID: 7920155

Claim:
An image forming apparatus including an image forming unit that forms an image on a recording medium based on image data by emitting a laser beam from a laser light source onto a photosensitive member to form a latent image thereon and visualizing the latent image formed on the photosensitive member, comprising: a conversion unit configured to convert the image data into lighting patterns for turning on and off the laser light source on a basis of each of auxiliary pixels formed by dividing each pixel as an image forming element; a storage unit configured to sequentially store lighting patterns each for one pixel from said conversion unit, and sequentially output the lighting patterns to said image forming unit, said storage unit being configured to accumulate the lighting patterns for a plurality of pixels; a storage control unit configured to perform control, when a lighting pattern for one pixel is stored from said conversion unit into said storage unit, such that an auxiliary pixel is added to the one pixel; a calculation unit configured to calculate a difference between a first image forming speed at which image formation is performed by said image forming unit, and a second image forming speed at which image formation is performed by said image forming unit and which is lower than the first image forming speed; and a determination unit configured to determine an amount of addition of auxiliary pixels to be performed using said storage unit based on the difference calculated by said calculation unit, wherein the first image forming speed is for forming a monochrome image, whereas the second image forming speed is for forming a color image.