Patent ID: 8368903

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: a control section which detects an offset of a recording sheet being conveyed, the offset being in a main scanning direction perpendicular to a conveyance direction of the recording sheet; performs an offset regulation control which adjusts a main scanning direction image area signal which represents an image area in the main scanning direction in accordance with the offset; forms a patch at a non-transfer area where an image to be transferred to the recording sheet is not formed on an image carrier; and controls an image forming condition by reading the patch by a sensor, wherein the control section performs a first control which generates an adjusted main scanning direction image area signal for performing the offset regulation control based on the offset of the recording sheet, and forms the image to be transferred to the recording sheet at a transfer area on the image carrier in accordance with the adjusted main scanning direction image area signal while a sub scanning direction image area signal which represents an image area in a sub scanning direction perpendicular to the main scanning direction is active for image forming on the recording sheet, and wherein the control section performs a second control which generates a non-adjusted main scanning direction image area signal for which does not perform the offset regulation control, and forms the patch at the non-transfer area on the image carrier in accordance with the non-adjusted main scanning direction image area signal while the sub scanning direction image area signal is inactive.