1. A method for a portable computing device to read information embossed on a form factor utilizing a built-in digital camera, the method comprising: capturing an image of the form factor having information embossed thereupon; detecting a plurality of embossed characters, wherein the detecting utilizes a gradient image and one or more edge images with a mask corresponding to regions for which specific information is expected to be found on the form factor; performing a comparison of a pair of the embossed characters; and determining dissimilarity between the pair of the embossed characters based on the comparison, wherein determining the dissimilarity includes estimating a probability that characters of the pair of the embossed characters are not the same based on a concatenated histogram of oriented gradients (HOG) corresponding to the pair of the embossed characters.