A color ink jet printing apparatus is provided which can print high quality color images and black letters without increasing a running cost and a printing time while using nozzle arrays with poor first ejection stability. For this purpose, inks with good first ejection stability are printed overlappingly at those of pixel positions printed by another nozzle array where the first ejection stability problem is likely to be caused by the latter nozzle array ejecting an ink with poor first ejection stability. This makes the first ejection stability problem less conspicuous on a printed image while taking full advantage of desirable characteristics of the inks used.