Patent ID: 7699436

Claim:
An ink jet printing apparatus for causing a plurality of nozzles arranged in a print head to eject ink droplets while the print head scans relative to a print medium, to print an image on the print medium, the apparatus comprising: scanning means for causing the print head to scan a same printing region of the print medium a plurality of times; thinning-out means for dividing image data corresponding to the same print region to pieces of image data to be printed by the respective plurality of scans by thinning-out image data corresponding to the same print region; and printing control means for printing, in accordance with the image data thinned out by the thinning-out means in the respective plurality of scans, a thinned-out image on the same print region to complete an image to be printed on the same print region, wherein the thinning-out means thins out image data to be printed on a plurality of same print regions at which the print head passes in one scanning with high and low thinning-out ratios in turn in a direction in which the nozzles are arranged.