I'm confused. Given that "images" are just data, how is taking a bunch of data about a black hole and combining it into a single "picture" of a black hole not

I'm confused. Given that "images" are just data, how is taking a bunch of data about a black hole and combining it into a single "picture" of a black hole not also gathering data to help us study black holes? As I understand it, the notability of the project is that it found a novel way to process data from coordinated data collectors scattered around the earth into a single coherent data set (with more resolution than any single collector could gather).