I downloaded the free trial a few days ago to see how it does. It does an ok job but adds a lot of noise to the image. I have found myself having to use Topaz Denoise after it. I like the DXO sharpen routine a lot better.
Try a google search for "sharpen ai review"
Ivan, I think this is the thread Jake mentioned.
https://nikonites.com/post-processing/44632-before-after-example-topaz-2-0-5-a.html?highlight=topaz
Say HI to Liz.
I've post elsewhere in this forum about how Topaz AI products have changed and greatly simplified my workflow. I have Denoise, Adjust, Sharpen, Mask, and Gigapixel AI products and use the first two on just about every shot I take. I've talked about them several times before so I'll just say if you're really interested you can find my posts elsewhere on them.
Since you ask about Sharpen AI all I can say is it's a tool I use for fixing sharpening on unsharp photos and not to sharpen photos that are already sharply focused. It does an impressive job correcting OOF, blurred, and just plain soft photos, but the AI is very slow on my 2014 Macbook Pro and it can take a minute-plus just to render a preview (hint, I have "Auto-Generate Preview" turned off on every AI product except Adjust), and then I've waited as long as 10 minutes for it to fully render the image (we're talking a 20MP D500 raw file as input). But, if you need to fix a shot then it's worth the wait. But for normal sharpening it's overkill. For that I start with Denoise, tweak in Camera Raw, and then enhance in Adjust.
The main reason I have them all is because I've purchased them in bundles, which saves you significant money (it's a 45% discount), and if they add a new product to a bundle and you have all the others you can rebuy the bundle and they credit you for the ones you already have so you get that 45% discount and you can still apply any other discount code you have.
Jake, how much RAM are you working with on this MBP? And what model is it? (I've looked at the Apple support site and don't see anything regarding a 2014 model.)
I'm running the latest upgrade to Sharpen AI on a Mid-2015 iMac operating at 3.3 GHz with 32GB of RAM. It is a bit tasking on the system, but not that bad. I'd sure hate to have to run it on my 2009 MBP, or even worse, one of my old Windows desktops.
WM
I've got 16GB which was the most I could get at the time (April 2014?) with a 2.6GHz processor, so yeah, I'm a little slower. Looking at going to a new 27" iMac and upgrading what I can to save $$ to pay for upgrades on what I'm not willing to screw with. I want to wait for the new models with the Apple processors but something tells me that's going to cost me more money.
That's because it's an utterly mislabeled product. it's not meant to sharpen, it's meant to fix an unsharpened image so that's what it's looking for and will try and fix things that you don't want fixed. Denoise does a better job at sharpening even if you don't need to denoise (turn that function down to zero), as does Adjust AI which includes far too many things that are in the Basic module of Camera Raw. I think of them this way...
Sharpen AI should have been Repair AI
Denoise AI should have been Clarify AI
Adjust AI should have been Detail AI
That's how I use them and they work well for those functions.