Laser beam scanning method and apparatus.

摘要

A laser beam recording method and apparatus are constituted for recording a continuous tone image by scanning a laser beam emitted by a semiconductor laser on a photosensitive material by a beam scanning system, and controlling a drive current for the semiconductor laser based on a light emission level instructing signal corresponding to an image signal, thereby to modulate the intensity of the laser beam. The laser beam intensity is detected, and a feedback signal corresponding to the detected intensity is fed back to the light emission level instructing signal. The light emission level instructing signal is corrected by a correction table to compensate for nonlinearity of drive current-optical output characteristics of the semiconductor laser and/or nonlinearity of incident light intensity-optical transmittance characteristics of an optical element of the beam scanning system, thereby to make linear the relationship between the intensity of the laser beam based on the corrected light emission level instructing signal and the uncorrected light emission level instructing signal.