Patent ID: 8217975

Claim:
An apparatus for forming an image on a photosensitive surface, comprising: a laser raster output scanner (ROS) including laser emitters arranged to simultaneously scan a plurality of laser beams across a single scan line of the photosensitive surface in response to received image data corresponding to pixels in an image to be reproduced; and a controller individually controlling each of the laser emitters to selectively apply one of a plurality of power levels to each of the laser beams based on the image data for each of the pixels, wherein a total power applied by the laser beams for each pixel is determined by a sum of the power levels applied by each of the laser beams, wherein the controller selects either the power levels for each of the laser emitters for each pixel from among five different power levels, or selects the power levels for each of the laser emitters to achieve a total power level applied to each pixel from among sixteen different total power levels, the sixteen different total power levels being substantially linearly spaced.