To provide a color image forming method which ensures no image unevenness or variation, a stable color tone of black dot and excellent overprint reproducibility.

In the color image forming method in which a silver halide photographic sensitive material having three or more silver halide emulsion layers different from one another in spectral sensitivity region on a support and containing a black image forming silver halide emulsion is subjected to dot image exposure on the basis of dot image information obtained by color separation and dot image conversion by scanning exposure with lasers or light emitting diodes having wavelengths in the respective spectral sensitivity regions and then the sensitive material is color-developed to form a dot image, the dot image exposure is modulated to three or more exposure intensity levels and a device for controlling the exposure intensity levels on the basis of the dot image information is used.