Patent ID: 7167279

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: a scanner unit which successively scans image data of each of a plurality of originals; a compression section which compresses the image data scanned by the scanner unit; a hard disk which stores the image data compressed by the compression section; a decompression section which decompresses the image data stored in the hard disk; a detection section which detects the direction of the original on the basis of the image data of a first one of the originals, which has been decompressed by the decompression section and scanned by the scanner section; a determination section which determines whether the image data decompressed by the decompression section is to be rotated or not, on the basis of a detection result of the detection section; a rotating section which rotates the image data of each original decompressed by the decompression section, when the determination section has determined that the image data decompressed by the decompression section is to be rotated; and an image forming unit which forms on an image formation medium the image data of each original, which has been rotated by the rotating section, or the image data of each original decompressed by the decompression section when the determination section has determined that the image data decompressed by the decompression section is not to be rotated, wherein the image data scanned by the scanner unit is pixel-unit image data relating to pixels in a main scan direction and a sub-scan direction of first to Nth ones of said originals, copy images of image data of the first to Nth originals are formed on the same surface of the image formation medium, said detection section detects the directions of the first to Nth originals on the basis of the image data of the first original, and said determination section determines whether the image data of the first to Nth originals, which has been decompressed by the decompression section, is to be rotated or not, on a detection result of said detection section and image formation positions on the image formation medium.