1. A computer-implemented method, comprising: under the control of one or more computer systems configured with executable instructions, obtaining an image captured by a camera of a portable computing device; identifying a first region and a second region within the image, the first region and the second region each containing at least one character of text; determining that the first region has at least one of a first amount of blur, a first level of contrast, or a first amount of noise that falls outside an acceptable range; determining that the second region has at least a second amount of blur, a second level of contrast, and a second amount of noise that falls within the acceptable range; performing at least one local image enhancement on the first region to improve text recognition within the first region for an optical character recognition (OCR) engine, wherein the at least one of the first amount of blur, the first level of contrast, and the first amount of noise is enhanced to fall within the acceptable range; and analyzing the first region with the OCR engine to attempt to recognize at least one text string in the image.