An approach for processing an image is presented. A category specifying characteristics of a shape of a license plate of a vehicle is determined. Characteristics of objects in the image are determined to match the characteristics of the shape. The image is determined to include the license plate and an identifier. A category specifying characteristics of an order of alphanumeric characters in the identifier is determined. Characteristics of the objects in the image are determined to not match the characteristics of the order of the alphanumeric characters in the identifier and based on the lack of a match, the image is determined to not include an identifiable license plate. Responsive to determining the image does not include the identifiable license plate, the image is determined to be invalid and a manual character recognition process for determining identifiers on license plates is bypassed.