It's a bit tedious to have to repeat oneself over and over again...
I don't want you to repeat yourself. I want you to engage your critics rather than just repeatedly brushing them off.
...in every instance that particulate matter which showed up better with Zeke was already visible pre-Zeke, albeit fainter or partially-masked by background.
As I pointed out earlier, your use of Zeke is either consequential or it isn't. If it is, you have omitted a sufficient validation of its purported role in signal recovery. If it isn't, it's only a liability to your argument and you should stop touting your simplistic use of it. Again, do you really think scientists in image analysis will go any easier on you than I have?
...as seems suggested by Zeke but not exclusively so compared with alternative contrast-enhancing software).
Zeke is not a contrast-enhancing tool. It is an edge-enhancing tool, relying on a simplistically implemented support-constrained deconvolution algorithm to achieve that effect. You have not addressed any of the issues these facts raise.
Any prospective new tool, whether intended originally for non-serious purposes (social media etc) has to be judged on its merits via comparative testing...
We already discussed the limits of black-box testing. Just because that's all you are personally able to do in this case does not mean it suffices for a validation of a tool for some particular purpose. Nor did you do actually test the ability of Zeke -- in black-box fashion or otherwise -- to confirm surface particles on cloth via a controlled trial. It looks like you tested it only on inconclusive data, and then interpreted positive results as a confirmation of method. Your comparative testing, as you describe it, doesn't seem to evade confirmation bais.
As we saw, but you declined to address, a knowledge of how the tool actually works is indispensable. Specifically, a knowledge of what problem the tool is attempting to solve is absolutely crucial in interpreting the results. It lets us understand the types of anomalies we can expect. When your "positive results" resemble one of those anomalies, it strikes us as strange that you're uninterested in further investigation.
...one cannot afford to go instantly dismissing potential new research tools, merely because they are seen as 'down-market' by non-scientists or even IT image photoediting cognoscenti.
The dismissal was not instantaneous nor ill-conceived. But you seem very much to want to believe that it was. As soon as questions were asked designed to determine your approach to tool untested for the purpose, you became belligerent and dismissive. Clearly you did not want to be questioned and continue to be uncooperative in the evaluation of your methods. I drew no conclusions until your evasion was inarguably evident.
Support-constrained deconvolution is not a new tool. That the crude implementation of it we see in Zeke may be new to you is irrelevant. In the hands of a properly educated and experienced practitioner, deconvolutions and other signal processing tools yield useful results. But they are by no means turnkey tools. You may dismiss all you want your critics' observation that the tool you're using is a toy version of a real method. But it matters. The introspection and control needed to apply the deconvolution properly for data recovery are missing in Zeke.
When it comes to image analysis, you are the non-scientist. Whatever qualifications you may have in other fields do not magically endow you with expertise in sciences you have not studied or practiced, nor does it grant a prerogative to assume they must be straightforward or intuitive. Let's hope your future posts come across as less elitist.
In science, it's best to put ALL preconceptions to one side, and start with a blank sheet
You wrongly assume your critics' objections are based on preconceptions. Yes, set aside preconceptions. But it is folly to set aside hard-won knowledge. Yet this is what you want the world to do. You want your personal authority to overrule knowledge obtained over decades by scientists whose only transgression seems to be not residing in your good graces.
putting each prospective new tool through its paces via testing against existing real-world references.
I don't see where you did this. Ostensibly you say these image manipulation tools reveal the presence of particulates on the surface of the Shroud. Whether used together or separately, I don't see where that was tested for these tools. Traditionally that ability would be tested by preparing samples, some known not to contain particulates and others known to contain them, and to have investigators not privy to the sample preparation blindly apply the tool and determine how well the results of their investigation correlate to what is known about the test samples. When an introspective analysis of the tool reveals a strong potential for false-positive results, the need for this particular kind of validation becomes more acute.
Attempts to close down debate with specialist jargon may cut the mustard on internet forums, but frankly has no place in open-minded, consider-all options scientific research.
Once again you forget that that was a response you explicitly solicited. You bristled at your analysis being labeled inexpert and asked your critics to put some substance behind that label. If you ask someone to put up or shut up, and they put up, you don't get to say they should have shut up instead. It's going to be hard to characterize me and your other critics as the ones who are trying to shut down debate.
Having legitimate objections to provably inept applications of method is not being "closed-minded." Continuing to consider options that are shown to have serious flaws is not advisable.
The modus operandi of science is not what a lot of folk on internet forums seem to imagine it to be. It's far more open-minded, less instantly judgmental than imagined. There would be far fewer folk choosing science as a career if that weren't the case.
And you may beg all you want for leniency, but I'd be willing to bet none of what you're doing today is intended to rise above self-published play science. So if this is just play science intended to amuse Shroud enthusiasts and go no further, have at it. No skin off my back.
I wasn't entirely honest when I said I didn't care what happened to you. If that were wholly true I simply would leave you in silence to wallow on the fringes. You seem interested in your baked-flour theory not being dismissed as pseudo-science. And by attachment, you seem to want your image processing to be seen as valid art. You may on the one hand dismiss it all as irrelevant bickering, which is what you seem to be after by posting here. Or on the other hand you can consider that there is a legitimate flaw in your method that will only bite you harder the farther down the field you run with it.
One of the yardsticks I use to identify pseudoscience is whether the author has simplified the problem to fit his knowledge instead of expanding his knowledge to accommodate the problem. If it is important to you to avoid the pseudoscience label, consider carefully your posture.
