Patent ID: 7317554

Claim:
A patch forming device for forming a plurality of color patches to be used for determining output characteristics of an image forming unit that can form images using a plurality of different color agents, the patch forming device comprising: a patch-data supplying portion supplying, an image forming unit that can form images using a plurality of different color agents, with patch-data for forming a plurality of color patches by a first color agent and a second color agent among the plurality of color agents, the second color agent being different from the first color agent, the patch-data including first patch-data indicative of a plurality of different levels of color density for the first color agent and second patch-data indicative of a fixed level of color density for the second color agent, thereby causing the image forming unit to output a plurality of different color patches on a recording medium, each color patch being formed of mixture of the first color agent in a corresponding density and the second color agent in the fixed density, the mixture of the first color agent and the second color agent having visual sensitivity higher than the first color agent; a surrounding-area-data supplying portion supplying the image forming unit with surrounding-area-data indicative of the fixed level of color density for the second color agent, thereby causing the image forming unit to form a surrounding-area image with the fixed density of the second color agent on the recording medium at a surrounding area that is defined around the plurality of color patches; an input portion enabling a user to input his/her visual observation result of the plurality of color patches and the surrounding-area image on the recording medium; and a calculating portion calculating output characteristics of the image forming unit for the first color agent based on the inputted observation result.