First, thanks for commenting that you feel that I may not be using LR sharpening correctly. A very reasonable comment, (and I am taking it as well meaning). But, I am pretty sure I am using the capabilities of LR sharpening fairly well. I have read/listened to 10-15 tutorials over the past several years on the topic. I still think it is a rather crude function when compared to what I can do in PS. I do use it is LR, but only when I just need basic sharpening. If I am wrong & missing some LR capability, that would actually be good because that would improve my skill set.

I will be reading the rest of your response in a little while and respond to it. I want to give it some thought. Thanks,

Agreed, PS has many options / techniques. But, really, what do you need more than a masking setting (slider) and strength for sharpening? I'd say the 'detail' slider is relevant too, where if you use the <Alt> key to convert the display, again you get LR to sharpen the relevant image details rather than the image grain. These two links were provided earlier. They include screen captures showing the LR tools in action.

Basics of noise processing

Basics of Lightroom Sharpening

Yes, sometimes LR does ok with the sharpening, but often I find that it does not. Here is one example of a PS technique that LR will not come close to replicating. There are many other examples. BTW this Youtube channel "PiXimperfect" has some really good videos on using PS (also LR). I find them some of the best tutorials of PS functions. But I must admit, much of the time I listen to a PS tutorial it just reminds me of how complicated using PS can be. I can "get by" in PS, but I am far from an expert. Unless I really need a function from PS, I mostly stay in LR.


*****************************
"Photoshop 'Sharpening Separation' Technique to Sharpen Your Photos Without Any Halos. Manually control the major aspects of sharpening to completely eradicate the white glow around the edges or in other words; halos"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slkj-Xz4nHM

No, I'm saying LR applies default settings to all RAW imports. Most LR novices don't recognize nor refine these at-import defaults. This example image isn't particularly noisy being ETTR in a bright light at ISO-1000.

Box 1 and the background canvas are an unedited image at ISO-1000 with the LR defaults. Box 2 is zeroing-out those LR default settings for an example version of the original RAW from the camera (alas, box 2 is really no visual difference vs box 1 in this section of blue sky). Box 3 is the fully edited image, but just a 500x500 crop of a darker section with Luminance and Color noise remaining in the sky. Box 4 is that same image from Box 3 run through Topaz to further clean-up the sky. For this example, the relevant comparison is boxes 3 and 4, but one needs also a view of the start-point (boxes 1 / 2). My point of these examples was to respond to a comment saying they failed to note a difference from Topaz, where I wanted to show even for an image that is relatively clean, Topaz does a great and noticeable job in the background details where noise hides in larger prints and / or higher resolution posts.

You can disparage LR sharpening, but that disparagement leaves me concerned you're not using the tool properly. The LR import defaults are insufficient and have no consideration of the masking nor image details. One needs to test for the pixel resolution of their camera(s) and the sharpness of their lenses, and they can find relatively general parameters, unique to their images, that are much more effective where they're sharpening the image details rather than the image noise.

Kind of what I'm saying. My thought might be clearer, if you reviewed the longer threads linked above, as the example posted from the airshow builds in the detailed ideas presented in the linked LR / UHH posts.

But toward 'yes', the defaults applied by LR upon RAW import are a pretty heavy noise reduction, only for Color NR. This will clean up a lot of noise, while also cleaning-out a lot of image detail. The sharpening default at RAW import will counter-act some of that Color NR default, but still, the images would (will) be much better when the digital editor (human) actually refines these default settings.

I don't have the Topaz AI tools to see how much smarter they perform than the LR import defaults. Again, as stated in my earlier comment, my older version of Topaz does a better job of smoothing out the color and luminance noise in the background, creating a very 'clean' all-over image, better than using just Lightroom alone. My technique is to use both tools together, when needed, but I have older software and don't have valid current versions to assess current performance.

I got Topaz a couple months ago. Had a family wedding and took a lot of photos during the reception. Of course it was low light and there was noise. So I found a good set of photos to use Topaz Sharpen and DeNoise on. I use Topaz as plugins to Photoshop. I actually don't find that it speeds up my processing nor is it more convenient. Maybe when I upgrade my old computer that will help.

My experience (albeit limited) is that DeNoise works great. I had no problems with it except trying to determine the minimum amount to apply. The photos look much better than what I could do in Photoshop alone.

OTOH, Sharpen seems to be a mixed bag. Since it was a low light environment, there were shots where one person was sharp and another was slightly soft. Most of the time that was improved by Topaz Sharpen. It doesn't make the out of focus people sharp, but it does make them less out of focus. However, there were a couple of shots where it failed miserably, adding extraneous elements to peoples faces. I can't rule out inexperience with the program as the cause, but I tried several things, all with the same result. On the whole, it does better than PS alone, but not always.

I will keep using Topaz because I think that it improves photos more than PS alone. Hopefully practice will mitigate any problems I encountered.

I recently downloaded DeNoise & Sharpen to test them out. I know that many people like these products and they do a good job. My question is: do they do a better job than using LR & PS?

I know in most situations, they are probably faster, but if you are proficient in LR & PS are they any better?

As an example, I find that the sharpening tool in LR is "OK" (even using masking etc), but if you sharpen in PS you can do some things that are just not possible in LR. For some images this can make a large difference.
Can I do something using the Topaz products that cannot be done as well in PS or LR?

I did some tests on several photos comparing results with LR & PS vs Topaz products. I could always get similar results . As far as I could tell the main "value added" with Topaz is the time saved editing each photo and probably the learning curve. Both are very important and alone, may make the products worth it, but not my question.