The problem is that we KNOW what the image is chemically composed of... and it cannot be caused by rubbing any bas-relief. In addition, Bas-Relief rubbings fail to duplicate almost all other features of the image on the Shroud. The negative nature is only superficially similar. The image on the Shroud is actually a terrain map... with image density being proportional to distance of the body part from the cloth. THAT trumps the bas-relief theory.
Another example was the elaborate instrumentation, experimental equipment, and contrived methods used by STURP investigators to achieve an image transfer from a human body to cloth that had the necessary "photographic negative" quality noticed early in the previous century and the "three-dimensional coding" noticed more recently. The alleged photographic negative effect is in reality not a true photographic negative, but the Shroud image has greater tonal densities in high-relief areas and lower tonal densities in low-relief areas. The so-called 3-D coding gives the Shroud image a 3-D quality when processed through image analysis software that converts tonal gradations to a third axis--height. All of this elaborate equipment and painstaking testing was a useless waste of time and unnecessary expense, since, as I demonstrated many years ago, the photonegative quality of the Shroud image is not a true photographic negative but a faux-photonegative. Both this and the alleged 3-D coding are completely natural and easily attributed to the tonal gradations in pigment application by the artist, using either a bas relief rubbing (suggested by Joe Nickell and my favorite explanation, which I explained automatically creates a faux-photonegative image with tonal gradations such as the Shroud possesses) or a direct faux-negative, tonal-gradation painting (Walter McCrone's hypothesis, which he believes is a simpler explanation, but which I consider to be more complicated and requiring more skill on the part of an artist).
http://www.freeinquiry.com/skeptic//shroud/articles/rogers-ta-response.htm