Patent ID: 8789913

Claim:
A printing apparatus comprising: a printing mechanism by which printing is performed on a printing medium with inks of a plurality of colors using an inkjet system; a print control part that, when each page of said printing medium is printed, prints a page identifier on said printing medium based on page identification information included in print data of said each page, by controlling said printing mechanism; an image pickup part that captures an image of said page identifier; and an inspection part that detects a printing defect by acquiring a page identification result from an output of said image pickup part and comparing said page identification result with said page identification information, wherein said page identifier includes a plurality of single-color parts each having a shape representing a respective one of single-digit integers from “0” to “9”, said plurality of single-color parts are printed respectively in a plurality of single-color-part printing areas, said plurality of single-color-part printing areas and a plurality of blank areas on which printing is not performed being alternately arranged, under control of said print control part, said page identifier on said each page is printed with only one of said plurality of colors, and printing of a plurality of single-color parts with all of said plurality of colors is performed during a period in which printing is being performed on only a predetermined number of pages.