Patent ID: 8550589

Claim:
An image recording method utilizing a line head including a plurality of recording element arrays, each having a plurality of recording elements in one direction, arranged in said one direction such that the recording elements have overlapping regions at the mutually adjoining end portions of the recording element arrays, the image recording method comprising: a halftone processing step for executing a halftone process of multilevel image data according to a first halftone processing rule to generate a dot pattern as a recording pattern to be recorded by outputting a recording material from a recording element of the plurality of recording element arrays; an allocation processing step for applying a second halftone process by each pixels constituting the recording pattern formed by the first halftone process to determine which of the adjoining recording element arrays records the dot; and a recording step for recording dot data allocated to each of the recording element arrays by using the recording elements of each of the plurality of recording element arrays included in the line head, wherein the second halftone process has a property to suppress a low frequency component of a two-dimensional spatial frequency domain for each of the dot data having been allocated, and judgment of allocating the dot of each pixel position to which of the recording element arrays is determined based on a result of allocation of the pixel position having been already determined.