An image forming apparatus includes an image forming device to form a correction image, an image density detector to detect image densities of a plurality of areas in the correction image, and circuitry to correct an image formation condition of the image forming device based on detected image densities of the plurality of areas. The circuitry replaces a detected image density of an area of interest selected from the plurality of areas with an average value of detected image densities of two or more areas including adjacent areas adjacent to the area of interest and corrects the image formation condition of the image forming device based on the detected image densities of the plurality of areas after replacement when a difference between the detected image density of the area of interest and at least one of the detected image densities of the adjacent areas exceeds a predetermined threshold.