PURPOSE: To improve the quality of a generated half-tone font by preventing the brightness of the generated half-tone font from decreasing.

CONSTITUTION: The half-tone font generation device 100 inputs a raster font 104 and generates the half-tone font 110. The half-tone font generation device 100 consists principally of a mesh value calculating means 106 and a gradation arithmetic means 108. Specially, this gradation arithmetic means 108 corrects (shifts) gradation values by a gradation shift means 108d, etc., and the mean value of the generated half-tone font can be increased up to a predetermined intermediate value. Consequently, the mean value of the brightness of the character part of the generated half-tone font can be increased and the quality of the generated half-tone font can be improved.