Patent ID: 6969155

Claim:
A printing apparatus for performing printing by discharging ink from an ink-jet printhead, having plural printing elements capable of discharging ink droplets in plural sizes, to a print medium, comprising: input means for inputting print data; count means for counting a number of concurrently-driven printing elements corresponding to a respective size of the plural sizes, based on the print data inputted by said input means, said count means comprising first and second counters; determination means for determining a drive pulse applied to the concurrently-driven printing elements corresponding to the respective size of the plural sizes, based on the result of counting by said count means; and print means for performing printing by applying the drive pulse determined by said determination means to the concurrently-driven printing elements, wherein the plural printing elements are divided into plural blocks, said print means comprises time-divisional drive means for time-divisionally driving the plural printing elements in block units, and said count means counts the number of concurrently-driven printing elements in the block units, said first counter counting the number of concurrently-driven printing elements, among a first group of printing elements corresponding to discharge of a first size of ink droplets, in block units, and said second counter counting the number of concurrently-driven printing elements, among a second group of printing elements corresponding to discharge of a second size of ink droplets.