| 摘要 |
<p>A thermal transfer image forming apparatus including a printhead (6) having a plurality of heating resistor elements (14) arranged in a row, wherein a recording sheet (1) and an ink sheet (9) are forwarded at a predetermined pitch, image data forming inputted image data is extracted at a certain interval, and the heating resistor elements (14) of the printhead (6) are supplied with electric energy corresponding to a density specified by the image data so as to correspond to the extracting interval. The image data is extracted at an interval amounting at least to a single pixel out of the image data fed from an external device in the main scanning direction so as to prevent thermal interference with the neighboring heating resistor elements (14), so that the heating resistor elements (14) are operated accurately with respect to such electric energy as to form a dot larger than the dot size specified by the highest density of the inputted image data. As a result, density can be expressed in a high number of gradations. This permits sufficient tone expression and color reproduction even if the area of a sampling region is reduced, hence reducing the dither processing steps to thereby decrease image data processing time and preventing generation of texture noise. <IMAGE></p> |
