Image forming apparatus

An image forming apparatus includes an image forming device and circuitry. The image forming device forms an image with colorants of different colors. The circuitry determines whether there is a possibility that a shortage of a colorant adhesion amount occurs in primary-color image formation using a colorant of a primary color and cause the image forming device to perform two-color image formation in which only secondary-color image formation using a colorant of a secondary color different from the colorant of the primary color is added to the primary-color image formation using the colorant of the primary color to form an image to be formed with the colorant of the primary color, when the circuitry determines that there is a possibility that the shortage of the colorant adhesion amount occurs in the primary-color image formation using the colorant of the primary color.