In accordance with an embodiment, an image forming apparatus comprises a deflector, a photoconductor, a mirror, a displacement mechanism and a control section. The deflector deflects laser light emitted from alight source to an optical path of each color in a horizontal scanning direction. The photoconductor is located in each optical path and forms an image of each color through development of an electrostatic latent image formed by being exposed by the laser light. The mirror is located in each optical path and reflects the laser light to each corresponding photoconductor. The displacement mechanism is arranged on each mirror and displaces the mirror in order to correct an inclination shift between images of respective colors. The control section corrects a magnification of the image of each color in the horizontal scanning direction according to an inclination correction amount of the image of each color.