Patent ID: 7450144

Claim:
An image forming apparatus, comprising: a laser exposure unit that performs scanning exposure in a nonlinear light emission region state, and in a laser emission region state that emits laser light; a reference clock generation unit for generating a reference clock as a reference for timing the scanning exposure; an accepting unit for accepting data on a first pixel to be expressed according to image data, and data on a second pixel to be expressed after the first pixel; and a control unit for performing a first control that controls each of the scan-start timings of the first pixel and the second pixel in accordance with the reference clock if scanning exposure is performed on the first pixel and the second pixel in the laser emission region state, and performing a second control to advance the scan-start timing of the second pixel with respect to the first control if scanning exposure is performed on the first pixel in the nonlinear light emission region state and scanning exposure is performed on the second pixel having a density equal to or lower than a predetermined density in the laser emission region state that takes a longer rise time from the nonlinear light emission region state to the laser emission region state compared to a case in which there is a sufficient density difference between the first pixel and the second pixel.