Interesting thread, and the demo here of Gigapixel AI is very impressive. I've been playing with a trial version of Denoise this week...Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but to me it just blurs heck out of noisy areas in a ham-handed way. I have better results with either selectively applying noise in LR CC--or by doing the same in PS CC where I can tweak by color channel and use masks much more easily.
I do subscribe to the whole Adobe suite as I need other Adobe programs for my work, and occasionally use PS. I haven't the time or skill to use colour channels and masks as DxO denoises amazingly well without compromising sharpness as part of a preset, so it's my default program. I do find Topaz AI sharpening and Gigapixel useful as I am often pushing cropping to the limits.
Have you tried "Select Subject"? Very fast selecting to create masks for applying noise-reduction to back grounds. Anything that shouldn't have the denoise applied can be brushed right out in the mask. Quick! And by using Smart Objects, we can go back to apply more or less.
