Patent Document ID: 8693902
Application ID: 13327208
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. An image forming apparatus comprising: a charging unit that uniformly charges a surface of a latent image carrier so as to cause a surface potential of the latent image carrier to be a target charging potential; a latent-image forming unit that exposes, based on image data, the surface of the latent image carrier having been charged by the charging unit with light so as to form a dot latent image that is a dotted electrostatic latent image; a developing unit that performs development by causing toner to electrostatically adhere to one of an electrostatic latent image portion and a non-electrostatic latent image portion on the surface of the latent image carrier; a transfer unit that eventually transfers a toner image formed on the surface of the latent image carrier through the development by the developing unit onto a recording medium; and an image-density adjusting unit that causes the latent-image forming unit to form a multi-gradation patch pattern on the surface of the latent image carrier, that causes a potential detecting unit to detect potentials of respective latent image patches in the multi-gradation patch pattern, that causes a toner adhesion amount detecting unit to detect a toner adhesion amount on each toner patch that is formed through the development of the respective latent images by the developing unit, and that performs control of an image density based on the detection results, wherein a low-density latent image patch or a plurality of low-density latent image patches belonging to a predetermined low-density range among the latent image patches that form the multi-gradation patch pattern has a configuration in which a basic dot matrix that is a minimum pixel unit for area gradation control is periodically arranged, and in which number and arrangement of dot latent images in the basic dot matrix are determined in accordance with a corresponding density in units of a unit dot latent image that is formed with one of a dot latent image and a plurality of groups of dot latent images, and a part or all of either the low-density latent image patch or the plurality of the low-density latent image patches is a dot-dispersed latent image patch in which the arrangement of unit dot latent images in the basic dot matrix is determined so that a minimum center-to-center distance having a smallest value among center-to-center distances of the unit dot latent images is maximized.