PRINTER AND PRINTING METHOD FOR IMAGE-QUALITY CORRECTION

A printer performs printing after appropriately correcting irregularities, thin-line patchiness, and isolated pixels. A first image-quality corrector unit detects slanting-line irregularities represented by the black and white pixel data generated through binary processing according to a method other than the error-variance method to thereby perform smoothing processing therefor. A second image-quality corrector unit detects defects such as irregularities and patchiness specific to the binary processing according to the error-variance method to thereby perform smoothing processing therefor. A third image-quality corrector unit detects isolated pixels in gray fields that are specific to the binary processing according to the error-variance method to thereby distribute the isolated pixels to peripheral pixels. When an original image is reduced in size according to pixel-removal prior to the binary processing, the pixel-removal is not performed if a gradient variation is relatively great with respect to peripheral pixels.