Method of thermal wax transfer printing

Abstract

A thermal head is moved in a sub scan direction relatively to a recording paper, the thermal head having a plurality of heating elements disposed along a main scan direction. The length of each heating element along the main scan direction is longer than its length along the sub scan direction. While the thermal head moves by a distance corresponding to the width of a picture cell, drive time of each heating element, in which each heating element is driven continuously or intermittently, is controlled to change the recording area of wax type ink dot transferred to the recording paper. Adjacent ink dots in the main scan direction are displaced by a predetermined distance in the sub scan direction. If a thermal head is intermittently moved by a unit movement amount, the unit movement amount is set smaller than the width of the heating element in order to achieve a high gradation. In printing a color image using at least three types of inks including cyan, magenta, and yellow, the recording positions of the color inks are displaced. In order to prevent hue change and color moire of an image, the picture cell density is set different in the sub scan direction at least between cyan and magenta.