Whenever I process an image with a grey sky as the background I am getting weird artefacts. The attached image shows it and I can repeat the same on many images of a similar nature. These are from a CR2 RAW taken with a Canon 7D2. Processed with Denoise AI as 16bit TIFF, ProphotoRGB 240dpi Compression None. In Denoise I just apply the default setting. The artefacts are particularly noticable to the right of the bird in this shot. While they are easy to clean up in Photoshop afterwards it does add an extra bit of effort to processing.
While I do see the artifacts in your edit picture, I ran the original (jpg) through Sharpen AI then Denoise AI and it didn’t produce any. Maybe try to go from your photo program directly into the Topaz programs.
I do go from Lightroom to Denoise. I will do some more testing later on some other images.
Artifacts are a common problem in Denoise AI.
The program sharpenes too much, even if the controls are set to 0, which results in artifacts, color fringing and similar image disturbances.
