Patent ID: 7448709

Claim:
An ink-jet printing apparatus which prints an image on the basis of print data by scanning, relative to a printing medium in a direction transverse to a layout direction of a plurality of printing elements, a carriage which supports a printing head having the plurality of printing elements, said ink-jet printing apparatus comprising: driving means for grouping the plurality of printing elements into a plurality of blocks every predetermined number of printing elements, and for driving printing elements belonging to each block at the same driving timing; holding means for holding a plurality of different patterns respectively indicating different driving orders of the plurality of blocks; and driving order determination means for selecting any one pattern from the plurality of different patterns, and outputting the selected pattern as the driving order of the plurality of blocks, wherein the driving order of the plurality of blocks is changed according to the selected pattern outputted by said driving order determination means, wherein the plurality of different patterns includes a first pattern and a second pattern that does not indicate a driving order that is the reverse of a driving order indicated by the first pattern, and wherein said driving order determination means changes the driving order for every predetermined number of columns, each column corresponding to a pixel in the direction perpendicular to the layout direction of a plurality of printing elements.