In industrial environments, characters engraved on metal surfaces often suffer from poor visibility due to variations in illumination and metal surface reflection. This study evaluates and compares three image enhancement techniques - CLAHE (Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization), RETINEX and Inpainting - to improve character recognition under such challenging conditions. Experimental results show that CLAHE significantly enhances contrast while preserving structural details, resulting in superior recognition performance. RETINEX effectively reduces illumination inconsistencies but introduces noise artifacts, while Inpainting restores lost or degraded characters but struggles with fine details. The comparative analysis demonstrates that CLAHE outperforms other methods in terms of character visibility and recognition accuracy, making it the most suitable method for industrial applications.