This paper describes research of image enhancement for detection of face area. Typical face recognition algorithms used fixed parameter filtering algorithms to optimize face images for the recognition process. A fixed filtering scheme introduces errors when applied to face images captured in various different environmental conditions. For acquiring face image of good quality from the image including complex background and illumination, we propose a method for image enhancement using the categories based on the image intensity values. When an image is acquired average values of image from sub-window are computed and then compared to training values that were computed during preprocessing. The category is selected and the most suitable image filter method is applied to the image. We used histogram equalization, and gamma correction filters with two different parameters, and then used the most suitable filter among those three. An increase in enrollment of filtered images was observed compared to enrollment rates of the original images.