title: How can I detect all objects in this image with a white background without merging them with each other?
body: <p>My goal is to separate all the objects from each other. After that I could use blob or detection so that I can measure the area of each one to make a Histogram with the size distribution of the objects.</p>
  <p>Original image:</p>
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/AjCok.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/AjCokm.jpg" alt="original image" /></a></p>
  <p>The problem is that the objects are merging with each other, mainly due to their shadow and/or their proximity to each other.</p>
  <p>Final results - bounding box:</p>
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/NRqBE.png" alt="Final results - bounding box" /></p>
  <p>Binary image:</p>
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/o7NRB.png" alt="Binary image" /></p>
  <p>I have tried canny edge detection, holistically-nested-edge-detection, and still having this issue.
  What can I do to fix it?</p>