An image forming apparatus includes recording heads for ejecting recording liquids of colors onto a recording medium. The apparatus includes a reference-patch forming unit that records a reference patch, the reference patch being formed by overlaying dot array patterns recorded with the recording liquids of different colors, the dot array patterns having no correlation therebetween; a detection-patch-group forming unit that records a detection patch group including detection patches, each of the detection patches being formed by overlaying dot array patterns recorded with the recording liquids of the different colors, the dot array patterns having a same cycle of regular dot array, the detection patches being allocated with different misregistration amounts of the dot array patterns; and a color-misregistration correcting unit that corrects color misregistration based on results of comparison between color tone of the reference patch and color tone of each of the detection patches.