A system and method for effectively performing an adaptive encoding procedure includes a texture analyzer that initially determines texture characteristics for blocks of input image data. An image transformer converts the blocks of image data into sets of coefficients that represent the various blocks. A block categorizer utilizes the texture characteristics to associate texture categories with the sets of coefficients from the various blocks. Deadzone tables are provided for storing deadzone values that define deadzone regions for performing appropriate quantization procedures. A quantizer may then access the deadzone values from the deadzone tables to adaptively convert the coefficients into quantized coefficients according to their corresponding texture characteristics.