I use Photo-AI in my workflow for processing wildlife images and I find that the sharpening model is almost useless with settings generated automatically. It almost always leads to a lot of image artificacts that make the image quality very much worse. I hoped that the improvements claimed for the 2.0 sharpening model would solve this problem, but the situation has not changed. It’s partucularly noticeable with any fine detail such as feathers/fur/scales. Is the model trained at using wildlife images?
Maybe try the strong sharpening. In opposite to its name it seems to handle images more sensitive. I also noticed that the denoise option tends to add a strong sharpening effect.
Do you have files you can send me for the sharpening? I can reproduce the results with the originals and share with my team so we can tweak the sharpening model.
You can securely submit your image(s) to my Dropbox using the link below. Please be sure to send me a note to let me know you sent something.
Dropbox File Request
We also have new Autopilot Preferences that let you control the default strength of the sharpening. In your case, you likely want to decrease the strength.
I’ve uploaded an example where the defaults have produced some very obvious artifacts around the white neck feathers