IMAGE FORMING APPARATUS

A control unit causes a recording head to eject ink from nozzles corresponding to an image to be printed. An ejection malfunction nozzle detecting unit prints a test pattern using the recording head, and detects an ejection malfunction nozzle on the basis of a scanned image of the test pattern. The test pattern includes plural test pattern images such that in each of the plural test pattern images a dot is not formed at a dot position of a target nozzle set as a non ejection nozzle, and the target nozzles of the plural test pattern images are sequentially shifted by one nozzle in a primary scanning direction. Further, the ejection malfunction nozzle detecting unit determines an ejection malfunction nozzle on which ejection deviation occurs, on the basis of density decreasing amounts of respective density decrease parts in the plural test pattern images in the scanned image.