Jpg "Artifacts" in Newton by Blake

At first I was convinced that the supposed text on Cicada's version of "Newton" by William Blake were simply jpg compression artifacts. Now, however, I am not so sure.


We set out in search of finding the exact image Cicada had used to make their copy. Simple enough, we found a high resolution version on wikipedia that matched perfectly (the others had slight coloring or lens distortions). This can be found here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Newton-WilliamBlake.jpg

The official Cicada image was flipped horizontally, so we flipped ours as well.

I then continued in Photoshop to overlay and make a subtract the pixel differences. After then flipping it vertically, I got this: http://i.imgur.com/MZXI0A3.jpg

Looks like not much... Right? Wrong. Take a really close look at the top/right side. You might see a few lighter areas up there.

So I added contrast to the bottom layer:
http://i.imgur.com/d9grMff.jpg

Again. Look right where the finger is pointing. Looks like letters right?

EDIT: Why is this upside down? Depends on what you think the letters are. I was thinking they were W's but they could also be M's

Ok. So at this point, assuming these are letters and NOT compression artifacts, then what are they? Well obviously we don't know the font. But we can guess its something basic. I typed out what I thought the characters were and did the following with respect to fonts:

Default Photoshop Font: Adobe Gothic STD

Font Size: 7

For "XXX" I set the font mode to "none" and the character spacing to -100

For the "III" I set the font mode to "crisp" and the character spacing at 0

For the "WWW" I set the font mode to "sharp" and the character spacing to -100

Here is the full size result:

http://i.imgur.com/txa4C2Q.jpg

And a cropped down version:

http://i.imgur.com/xUhENkk.png

 

Now these could be totally different if they were inverted (I did flip the image). But at least it shows that their is probably something there and that this was edited in.

In short... I don't know WHAT it says but I am at least 70% certain those are not "artifacts" we are seeing, but rather text edited into the picture.

COUNTER ARGUMENT: The issue I have with all this is that Cicada is "planned," meaning that I am not totally sure that 3301 would leave us to guess at what the characters are. There are hundreds of potentially "relate-able" interpretations/variations and we would have no idea how to use them. Especially the part after the "WWW" is so hard to read....

Leave a comment with your ideas as to what the text says, or if you have any questions about the process of deriving this all. (All images saved as PNG for lossless viewing).

Other ideas for the top text: 

IIICCCV

IIIXCCV

AXXXIII (Inverted)

For the bottom:

WWW.XX