US Patent 8931869 Inkjet printing apparatus and inkjet printing method

In a serial type of color inkjet printing apparatus having a plurality of nozzle arrays, overlapping areas are provided in the respective operating nozzle areas, but printing of a high-quality image can be achieved without color banding and gloss variations accompanying non-uniformity in the ink application process. To attain this, while the operating nozzle areas of the plurality of nozzle arrays partially overlap with each other, the overlapping area of the operating nozzle area of each nozzle array is set to be equal to an integral multiple of the amount of conveyance. In consequence, the ink application process for the entire image area is made uniform.