How to identify letter in an image using Python? : I'm trying to use OpenCV to identify the letters of an image.

So far I'm reading the image > Applying Blur > Identifying the Edges of the letters, but for some of them it works well, but most of them I'm facing 2 kind of problems:

 1. Sometimes the cv2.Canny() cannot identify all the letters, or just part of them (like the example below it is missing the last letter "d" and it is taking just part of the letter "m")

 2. Some letters have a shadow below them and it is has been identifying as a edge and coming below the letter.

[Original Image][1]

[Processed Image][2]

Code:

`img = cv2.imread('.\\new_letters\\image.jpg', 0)
blur = cv2.GaussianBlur(img,(5,5),0)
edges = cv2.Canny(blur,20,60)`


  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/NHxgb.jpg
  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/DddcH.jpg


Please I would like to ask you if you know how can I identify all the letter properly and how can I remove the lines created by the shadow of some letters?