I am trying to read the text from a U.S. penny to orient the coin.

the original is from
https://www.usmint.gov/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/2024-lincoln-penny-uncirculated-obverse-philadelphia.jpg

I have extracted the word liberty, and am having difficulty with tesseract.

the code I am using is

def GetLibertyCroppedArea(img):
    # ll = 10,242
    # ur = 130,190
    top = 190
    bot = 240
    lft = 10
    rgt = 130
    cropped_area = img[top:bot, lft:rgt]
    cropped_area = cv2.resize(cropped_area, (360,150))
return cropped_area

def LoadImage(fn):
    img = cv2.imread(fn)
    img = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
    img = cv2.resize(img, (400,400))
    return img

img = LoadImage(fn)
liberty = GetLibertyCroppedArea(rotated_image)
text = pytesseract.image_to_string(liberty, config='--psm 8')
text = text.rstrip()
print(text)

I have tried various psm values without success

what preprocessing steps are necessary for tesseract to have a better chance of recognition ?