1. A method for adaptive character segmentation in an automatic license plate recognition application, said method comprising: identifying via at least one processor a region of interest in an image of a license plate acquired via an automatic license plate recognition engine that communicates with said at least one processor; segmenting via said at least one processor said characters in said image with respect to said region of interest using a histogram projection associated with particular segmentation threshold parameters; iteratively validating said characters in said image via said at least one processor if a minimum number of valid characters is determined based on said histogram projection and said particular segmentation threshold parameters to produce character images sufficient to identify said license plate; and increasing said particular segmentation threshold parameters in small steps to avoid over-segmentation.