I've experienced something similar (in Candy Gold). What I learned from it was: I was not waiting long enough between the coats, and this would cause the layers over edges and bumps to 'melt' into each other somewhat because the paint hadn't "flashed off" (term I learned from a bodyshop friend) yet when I applied the next coat(s). This makes the new coat spread itself out and thin itself down over features like edges or raised sites, and it also tended to make an uneven surface there (like a wrinkle or ridge), even making it look like tiny hailstones had hit it on the high feature. The top color was then extremely thin on those features as compared to the other areas. It also highlited any low areas as darker spots.
The bodyshop guy described this as "the paint didn't have enough traction [sic] top stay on the high point, and as it slid away it melted into the previous coat right there" (that's pretty close to what he said, anyway...).
I've also learned that waiting more than 24 hours between the basecoat(s) and the color coat(s), despite some articles cursing this method, worked out much better. Now, I will wait at LEAST 4 hours after the basecoat (if the topcoat is translucent like Candy Colors) before laying on the first of multiple coats, and then the multi-coat of the same paint acts more predictably than the (basecoat+colorcoat) with modern paints. Certainly back in the 1970s, we had to be VERY cognizant of the humidity and temperature, and we timed the layers of paint with a stopwatch (10-12 minutes between multiple basecoats, wait 18-24 minutes for 1st topcoat, all topcoats at even time intervals of between 8 and 20 minutes, longer with high humidity) and clear topcoat(s) went on the next day - at least 20 hours later. Today they don't seem to be quite so tricky to apply as those were!
