PURPOSE: To obtain a sharp image and to achieve speedup by providing a light absorbing layer converting the light energy of laser beam to heat energy to one surface of transfer paper and dividing the same into a large number of heat generating parts and providing heat insulating parts between the heat generating parts.

CONSTITUTION: A thermal transfer type image forming apparatus irradiates transfer paper 15 with laser beam to allow heat generating parts 32 to generate heat and sublimes the heat-meltable ink or thermal sublimable dye of an ink layer to form a pixel type image. Since the light absorbing layer 21 of the transfer paper 15 has the heat generating parts 32 separated by grooves 31, the transfer of the heat generated in the heat generating parts 32 irradiated with the laser beam R to the adjacent heat generating parts 32 is suppressed by the grooves 31 and only the heat generating parts 32 irradiated with the laser beam R become high temp. Only the ink at the parts corresponding to the heat generating parts 32 of the ink layer 20 of the transfer paper 15 is melted and small pixels each having a sharp contour can be obtained and the density of the pixels is enhanced and a sharp image can be transferred to recording paper 16. Since the light absorbing layer 21 is directly heated by the laser beam R, speedup can be achieved.