Patent ID: 8493613

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: a positioning unit configured to acquire a misalignment amount of a pixel in a main-scanning direction and a misalignment amount of the pixel in a sub-scanning direction from a position of the main-scanning direction, the pixel being used as a reference pixel for zooming image data, and the image data consisting of a plurality of pixels, and to decide a position of a pixel, the pixel being a correction target, as a target pixel based on the misalignment amount in the main-scanning direction and on the misalignment amount in the sub-scanning direction, as a positioning process; a correcting unit configured to correct the pixel located at the pixel position, as a correction process; a zooming unit configured to control the positioning unit and the correcting unit for zooming the image data so as to repeatedly perform the positioning process and the correction process on a pixel line of the sub-scanning direction including the pixel located at the pixel position and to repeatedly perform the positioning process and the correction process, which are performed on the pixel line of the sub-scanning direction, in the main-scanning direction, as a zooming process; a pattern recognition unit configured to perform pattern matching on a predetermined pattern and a predetermined pixel line of the image data; and a pixel position changing unit configured to shift the decided pixel position in the sub-scanning direction, when the pixel line of the sub-scanning direction including the pixel of the pixel position decided by the positioning unit is identical with the pattern, wherein the zooming unit performs the zooming process on the pixel line of the sub-scanning direction including the pixel that is located at shifted pixel position shifted by the pixel position changing unit.