There is disclosed an information recording apparatus capable of contour smoothing by modifying the data of an object pixel, referring to a surrounding area. There is employed a wide reference area, for example 11 x 9 pixels, divided into plural reference areas, all of which are referred to in the modification of the object pixel, and the modification of the object pixel is achieved by dividing the object pixel into plural sub pixels. In this manner the contour smoothing can be achieved in more natural manner, also in consideration of the curvature of the contour. Also the modification of the object pixel is inhibited if the original image is identified as a halftone image or certain characters, in order to avoid image blurring by such smoothing.