Thanks guys! Funny, I showed the example to my daughter earlier and she didn't like the middle one because of the obscured details...
Of course art is very subjective, so its success depends on the original image, the person viewing and the intended purpose of the piece.
What makes TG so special is the level of photorealism achieved, but being a scenery-generating app, the results also beg to be turned into art (as scenery is a classic subject). So it might also be marketed as an artist's tool for creating source scenery for further interpretation.
Here is another of my before-and-after TG/Topaz art examples, FWIW.
PS: I also like to add artsy or grunge to my own photographs, as in the attached example of LA, where I used several plug-ins (the tutorial is in one of my
ezines).