1. A method for recognizing one or more characters within a distorted image using a computing device, the method comprising: (a) rendering, with a processor executing code, an imitation image; (b) applying one or more distortion models to the imitation image, thereby generating a distorted imitation image; (c) comparing the distorted imitation image with the distorted image in order to compute a similarity between the distorted imitation image and the distorted image; and (d) identifying the characters based on the similarity.