To provide a method for forming a halftone dot gradation image by using a silver halide photosensitive material so that approximating property in tones from a printed material is improved from small dots to large dots, and interference irregularity is hardly induced.

A silver halide photosensitive material is exposed based on a multi-level image which is constituted from a binary image. The multi-level image represents a binary image having the dot percentage of over 0% and less than 100% by using pixels (a) of a tone corresponding to 100% dot percentage of a printed material and pixels (b) of another tone and by varying the ratio of the number of pixels (b) with respect to the number of the whole pixels in a halftone dot in accordance with the dot percentage. The photosensitive material has 0.8 to 1.5 reflective density.