Patent ID: 8159722

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: a skew correction unit that performs skew correction on image data by dividing pixels that belong to one line in a main-scanning direction of the image data into pixel blocks at at least one shift position and shifting a pixel block of the pixel blocks in a sub-scanning direction against a direction of skew; a noise determining unit that determines whether a pixel of interest that is on the shift position is a noise-inducing pixel, the pixel of interest being each pixel on the shift position, the noise-inducing pixel being a pixel that leads to local color density change because of a change in relationship with an adjacent pixel of the noise-inducing pixel; a selecting unit that selects, when the pixel of interest is determined as being the noise-inducing pixel, any one of the pixel of interest and a pixel in the vicinity of the pixel of interest as a correction target pixel on which correction of a color density is to be performed; a density determining unit that determines a color density of image data represented by a neighboring pixel of the correction target pixel; and a correcting unit that corrects the color density of the image data to be represented by the correction target pixel based on an area on the correction target pixel to be covered by a toner image that would be formed based on the color density determined by the density determining unit.