A note upfront: The background does not have to *"survive"* the process. It's the type (and visible style/design) I'm after.

I have this situation:

![cropped screenshot](https://i.stack.imgur.com/88Jsh.jpg)

Using Photoshop, what is the best technique to "undo" the drop shadows from a flattened image like this?

I'm guessing cutting out the individual letters and symbols with manually traced paths would be an option, but the results are not satisfying. Also, the image above is a cropped screenshot… as the complete image contains more than 100 characters and symbols, manually tracing each and every one of them steals too much time.

I'm open for any suggestion that works and helps me save time.