Patent ID: 8789908

Claim:
An image recording apparatus, comprising: a recording head configured to eject, to a recording medium, a first liquid by which an image is recorded on the recording medium and a second liquid that acts on the first liquid so as to improve characteristics of the first liquid; and a controller configured to control the recording head, wherein the controller is configured to perform: mode setting processing in which the controller selectively sets one of a plurality of modes including a first mode in which an image to be recorded based on image data is identified as a recording image which is an image to be recorded and a second mode in which an image having a density different from a density of the image to be recorded based on the image data in the first mode is identified as the recording image, the image data containing density values each for a corresponding one of a plurality of pixels arranged in matrix; first-data generating processing in which the controller generates first-liquid ejection data indicating an ejection amount of the first liquid for each of the plurality of pixels of the recording image; second-data generating processing in which the controller generates second-liquid ejection data indicating an ejection amount of the second liquid for each of the plurality of pixels of the recording image; and image-recording-control processing in which the controller controls the recording head to eject the first liquid and the second liquid to the recording medium according to the first-liquid ejection data and the second-liquid ejection data, wherein the controller generates the second-liquid ejection data in the second-data generating processing such that, where the second mode is set in the mode setting processing, the ejection amount of the second liquid for each pixel other than specific pixels in the plurality of pixels of the recording image is obtained by applying a first rule common to the plurality of modes while the ejection amount of the second liquid for each of the specific pixels is obtained by applying a second rule that corresponds to the second mode and that is different from the first rule, and wherein, where a ratio of a usage amount of the second liquid ejected from the recording head with respect to a usage amount of the first liquid ejected from the recording head is defined as a usage-amount ratio, the second rule is a rule by which the usage-amount ratio in an instance in which the second rule is applied to the specific pixels in the second mode is made closer to the usage-amount ratio in an instance in which the first mode is set in the mode setting processing, as compared with the usage-amount ratio in an instance in which the first rule is applied to the specific pixels in the second mode.