Image Processing Steps

Hi, I do have questions on the image processing steps:

I load the image then convert to grayscale then I apply image smoothing then image equalization (histogram equalization).

Which comes first image smoothing or histogram equalization as I am doing simple license plate recognition in C++?

This depends on what needs to be achieved. But this question is in general answered by text books. 1. Acquisition 2. Enhancement 3. Restoration 4. Processing 5. Segmentation 6. Object Detection 7. Representation 8. Compression

Hi which is better blur the image then equalize the image or equalize the image then blur the image in image processing/license plate recognition steps?

Blur is image smoothing
Equalize is image enhancement