Patent ID: 7710608

Claim:
A printing apparatus which is capable of printing an image on a medium by a print head having a nozzle that is capable of creating dots on a printing medium, the printing apparatus comprising: an image data acquiring module that acquires image data having pixel data with M types of pixel values (M≧3) configuring the image; an N-ary image data creating module that creates N-ary image data having N types of pixel values (M>N≧2) from the M types of pixel values (M≧3) expressed by each item of pixel data in the image data; an image data area splitting module that splits the N-ary image data into a plurality of image data areas configured of a predetermined number of items of pixel data; a pixel rearranging module that rearranges a position of a pixel corresponding to each item of pixel data included in each of the image data areas in the N-ary image data at a predetermined position in each of the image data areas; a printing data creating module that creates printing data which defines information about dot forming descriptions of each of the nozzles corresponding to the N-ary image data after the rearrangement; and a printing module that prints the image on the medium by the print head based on the printing data; wherein the nozzles of the print head are continuously arranged across an area equal to or wider than a mounting area of the medium.