Patent ID: 8424992

Claim:
A recording apparatus for recording an image with a plurality of inks including a cyan ink, a magenta ink, a yellow ink, a white ink containing a white color material, and a black ink on a recorded medium, comprising: dot pattern data forming means for receiving image data and forming respective dot pattern data with the plurality of inks; dot forming means for forming respective dots on the recorded medium with the cyan, magenta, yellow, white and black inks according to the respective dot pattern data obtained by the dot pattern data forming means, wherein the dot pattern data forming means includes forming a color of an achromatic area at least with a white dot and a black dot when the image data has color data of the achromatic area having a lightness not lower than a predetermined value and includes a color expressed by forming a cyan dot, a magenta dot, and a yellow dot simultaneously on the basis of subtractive mixture of color stimuli, wherein the dot pattern data forming means comprises means for determining from the image data whether a color of an achromatic area of the image has a lightness lower than a predetermined value and includes a color data expressed by forming a cyan dot, a magenta dot and a yellow dot simultaneously on the basis of subtractive mixture of color stimuli and, if the lightness is lower than the predetermined value, for causing the respective dot pattern data to be formed without the white ink and, if the lightness is not lower than the predetermined value, for causing the respective dot pattern data to be formed with the white ink.