How to remove the shadow and count the number of dices in the image

Hi all, I am new to image processing with matlab.

I am trying to count the number of dice, the total number of groups of dices from the image.

In the image, there are 3 different colors of dice, background full of noise and shadow which makes the problem harder.

How can I solve this problem? Should I extract them according to color or remove the shadow then binarize the image. I have totally no idea how to start.

This is the code I used but I don't think it's correct.

close all

img1=imread('Dice.jpg');

imshow(img1)

img1=rgb2hsv(img1);

img2=img1(:,:,3);

thresholded=img2>0.1;

thresholded=bwareaopen(thresholded,5);

img3=thresholded.*img2;

img4=edge(img3,'canny',graythresh(img3));

img4=imfill(img4,'hole');

figure,imagesc(img4)

B = bwboundaries(img4);

imshow(img4)

text(10,10,strcat('\color{green}Objects Found:',num2str(length(B))))

hold on

for k = 1:length(B)

boundary = B{k};

plot(boundary(:,2), boundary(:,1), 'g', 'LineWidth', 0.2)

end