IMAGE FORMING APPARATUS AND IMAGE FORMING METHOD HAVE PRINT FUNCTION TO PREVENT SEE-THROUGH

Provided is an image forming apparatus that can keep the character of a concealing area secret certainly even if it makes low the printing rate of a see-through preventive image. A concealing area specifying part specifies the concealing area that includes a concealing character string in the print data. A character discriminating part discriminates character attribute of the concealing character string. A see-through preventive image generation part sets the see-through preventing area where shape and a size are the same as the concealing area. Also, see-through preventive image generation part generates a see-through preventive image where multiple characters having the character attribute discriminated by the character discriminating part are generated at random. A printing part prints the see-through preventive image in the position piled up by the same direction for the concealing area at the time of enclosure.