Patent ID: 8289559

Claim:
A printing apparatus which prints by scanning a printhead in two directions based on raster data containing multi-valued data, the apparatus comprising: a print buffer configured to store a plurality of raster data; a buffer control unit configured to sequentially store multi-valued data contained in each raster data in said print buffer in correspondence with a predetermined direction of the two directions; a pattern buffer configured to store pattern data corresponding to a tone value of the multi-valued data; an acquisition unit configured to acquire, for each raster data, identification information corresponding to the multi-valued data stored in said print buffer first and identification information corresponding to the multi-valued data stored in said print buffer lastly for each tone value based on initial values of identification information and the number of multi-valued data contained in each raster data; a generation unit configured to generate bitmap data from the multi-valued data using pattern data read out from said pattern buffer based on one identification information selected from the two pieces of identification information based on a scanning direction of the printhead for each scanning of the printhead; and a print control unit configured to control printing of the printhead based on the bitmap data generated by said generation unit.