I was really interested in this GOTD, given how I rely on the AI in Topaz Denoise, Luminar Neo, & Photoshop to restore old photo prints and negatives. For testing I used a photo I took a while back of a well exposed 35mm print, taken with my Olympus camera using an Olympus macro lens at 200 ISO, so there was very little if any noise from the digital photo. Opening the RAW file in PhotoIns, I had it do its thing, saving the result as an uncompressed tiff file. I then went through my usual routine, opening the RAW file in Photoshop, comparing the results zoomed in at 300X with & without the AI denoise in Photoshop Camera Raw, and with & without the use of Topaz AI Denoise. The image PhotoIns produced was roughly equivalent to using Topaz AI Denoise, and *maybe* a little bit better than the AI denoise in Camera Raw, though with fine tuning in Camera Raw it *might* have met or exceeded the PhotoIns results. While PhotoIns did also enhance the colors, contrast, and lightness / darkness levels, I don't feel those adjustments were really consequential -- you could easily do better making those sorts of adjustments yourself -- though I suppose it would be worthwhile if you didn't want to do any hands-on work editing.
PhotoIns itself is a 3 module app, offering enhancement [mainly denoise], which is what we're given today, plus an enlarger and a background remover. Note: at its current state of development AI is far from perfect making the object selections needed for background removal or swapping. If it works for the image you're editing [sometimes it won't], the quality will probably be good enough for a quick job headed for the web, but not anything requiring better quality. The only adjustment you can make in the enhancement mod of PhotoIns is the strength of the applied AI effects. You can save the results as a .tif, png, or jpg file.
PhotoIns, like most AI apps takes up lots of disk space -- 2.34GB. The GOTD download is a downloader, though when you get the key on Leawo's site you can also download the complete setup file, at 999MB. Installation isn't bad, adding the program's folder, plus folders in ProgramData, & Users\ [UserName]\ AppData\ Local and Roaming, and an empty folder in Users\ [UserName]\ Pictures\. The registry gets one new Leawo key. Uninstalling PhotoIns removes the Start Menu [& I assume Desktop] shortcut, along with all but one file from the program's folder -- everything else you need to do manually.
I had a fair amount of trouble getting Photoins to run properly once I installed it -- it had what IMHO was an odd problem. I'm using a 4k display with text at 120% & Win11's display scale at 150%. The PhotoIns window was abnormally large, and the overlay window that 1st appears, showing what's registered / licensed, and allowing you to enter a key, was unresponsive. I finally fixed it by changing the compatibility setting for High DPI scaling override = System. I've had other apps scale improperly before, but it's never effected their operation.
In summary, if you edit photos & don't have an app or plugin for AI denoise, and want/need one for free, today's GOTD is a keeper. If you're going to buy something, unless you're after a more or less hands free alternative, skip PhotoIns, if for no other reason than the controls it's missing will prove quite necessary for the best results.