To lengthen the life of a head and to realize a high speed and high image quality printing by recording data for one head part by distributing them into a plurality of heads.

The recording data pass through a recording head selector circuit or a masking circuit provided just before transferring to the recording head. The recording head selector circuit selects an optimum head among a plurality of the heads by a carriage position, and transfers the recording data. The mask circuit applies the optimum mask to the recording data by the carriage position when the recording by a plurality of heads is performed.