Yes, it looks like Topaz are trying to maximise their profits rather than produce genuinely useful software that photographers can actually afford.
Lightroom+ Photoshop annual subscription @ the Black Friday price of £62.99 versus Topaz Black Friday price of £158. ($199.) No matter how good aspects of Photo AI are, it's a very limited piece of software.
I feel the same way. I cannot blame any company for trying to stay profitable, but I would like their products to be demonstrably useful at the same time.
The 3 old apps definitely were uniquely useful, at least until Lightroom introduced Denoise functionality. That basically made Denoise AI and respective PhotoAI functionality redundant almost overnight. This was perhaps the main use of their software, at least as far as I am concerned.
Sharpen AI is still relevant today, but only when one truly messes up which I try to avoid as much as possible. So maybe less than 0.1% of my deliverables. It is nice to have because you never know just when you will misfocus or when these horrible edges from EF 16-35mm f/2.8 will make image look totally unusable (motion blur model for that btw.)
Gigapixel is similar story, just even less frequently used. Pretty much only really needed for printing very very large, or if client throws you some utter iphone junk to add to their presentation or design.
I certainly felt like the 3 could become one, particularly where you may want to do 2 or 3 tasks all at once. Now it seems like photoAI was trying to do just that. They however threw away their best models and started with pure junk. Even last update can't match the latest denoise or sharpen ai. Gigapixel was the only one that didn't degrade, but then they decided to put their latest models only to standalone app to milk it one last time (may sub is long expired on that). Even worse, they just run all tasks sequentially one-by one instead of a unified process. Their focus also seems to be also wondering to RAW processing, all the iphone crapshot recovery and all that - and it doesn't even work that great. If they truly wanted to be a sort of replacement of Lightroom they need a whole library system which is not getting done. It truly puzzles me where the software is headed and whether I have any use at all for it other than the old versions I own. Ligtroom on the other hand feels properly complete, and while they can always improve it, it is just an improvement not a game changer.
Video AI is their other endeavour, and it may be most important and successful one going forward. Same caveat may apply here: your footage probably needs to be either messed up or lacking in some significant way - for example low res, or low frame rate for intended use. It is quite expensive, very slow and requires monstrous GPU like 4090. Personally I just much prefer working cleanly. They may already have big clients from hollywood studios and TV stations trying to upscale crappy 1080p scans, or 720p footage to 4k-like content. This is what may just keep them afloat if they play it right.
