Various embodiments enable regions of text to be identified in an image captured by a camera of a computing device for preprocessing before being analyzed by a visual recognition engine. For example, each of the identified regions can be analyzed or tested to determine whether a respective region contains a quality associated with poor text recognition results, such as poor contrast, blur, noise, and the like, which can be measured by one or more algorithms. Upon identifying a region with such a quality, an image quality enhancement can be automatically applied to the respective region without user instruction or intervention. Accordingly, once each region has been cleared of the quality associated with poor recognition, the regions of text can be processed with a visual recognition algorithm or engine.