An image forming apparatus includes a parsing part parsing printing data; plural rendering process parts carrying out a rendering process on the parsed printing data; a band memory to which each of the plural rendering process parts carries out the rendering; a rendering control part carrying out rendering control, based on a parsing result of the parsing part, to cause a predetermined one of the plural rendering process parts to generate intermediate data or carry out the rendering to the band memory; and a data memory storing the intermediate data generated by the predetermined one of the plural rendering process parts. Another of the plural rendering process parts carries out the rendering to the band memory using the intermediate data stored in the data memory.