Patent ID: 7676163

Claim:
An image forming apparatus capable of forming a color image using a plurality of image forming units, the apparatus comprising: at least four holding units, each operable to hold a different one of the image forming units that form an image on a body subjected to image transfer; and a control unit, in a case where, of the at least four holding units, a first image forming unit for magenta, a second image forming unit for cyan, and a third image forming unit for black are held in a first holding unit, a second holding unit, and a third holding unit, respectively, only the first through third image forming units are used so as to form the color image wherein when forming a color image with use of only the first, second and third image forming units, color image formation is performed in a pseudo color mode using magenta, cyan, and black, which is different in brightness-density conversion processing from a case of performing full color image formation with use of yellow, magenta, cyan, and black.