Image forming method and transfer recording medium therefor

Abstract

A transfer recording medium comprising a transfer recording layer is provided. The transfer recording layer causes an irreversible change in transfer characteristic when provided with plural kinds of energies such as heat, light and pressure energies. Such plural energies are applied to the transfer recording layer with at least one energy applied imagewise to provided a transferable portion or latent image portion in the transfer recording layer. The transferable portion is then transferred to a medium such as plain paper. The provision of plural kinds of energies aids in realization of high quality multi-color transfer image in a compact apparatus through functional separation of image formation and transfer operations. Further, even a multi-color image can be obtained through a single transfer step.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.