Patent ID: 7460255

Claim:
An image forming apparatus, comprising: a storage device configured to store input image information; a printer configured to print the image information stored in said storage device on a recording medium; a management data storage device configured to handle a cluster of the image information stored in said storage device as a file and to store image management data and file management data of the image information; a file selector configured to select a plurality of files to be printed; a printing mode selector configured to select between (1) a representative page printing mode in which an arbitrary page is designated and image information of the designated page of each of the plurality of files selected by said file selector is printed and (2) a sample printing mode in which a starting page and an ending page are designated and the information of the designated range of pages of each of the plurality of files selected by said file selector is printed; a page range designating device configured to designate a range of pages to be printed according to the page designated in the selected printing mode; and a controller configured to read image information of a page range designated by said page range designating device in each of the plurality of files selected by said file selector out of image information stored in said storage device based on the management data stored in said management data storage device and to print the read image information by said printer, when a print start instruction is provided with the printing mode selected by said printing mode selector and the page range is designated by said page range designating device.