I had mostly stopped testing AI Sharpen because the time to render an image was so long that it was not practical for me to use it but today I asked my self if using a jpg might be faster than using a tiff, if lower settings might make a difference and if Sharpen and Focus might have different render times. 8 bits vs 16 bits? 20% instead of 50%?
So I loaded up my workflow tool (Dxo’s Photo Lab 2) and sent a jpg to the latest version as a jpg and was surprised when a 20% Sharpen jpg took only slightly more than 2 minutes (2:08) to save. I then tried a tiff instead of a jpg and found that it took the same 2 minutes 8 seconds to save that as well. I then tried 50% and that took 2 minutes 16 seconds.
This was sharpen instead of focus, but that seems like the setting I would be more likely to use, so perhaps the time is not too great for me to use, if sparingly, when processing images. I then decided to try Focus again. Perhaps it was the new version (1.0.9) and my upgrade to Mojave on my Mac, but that processing (Focus, 50%) took 6:07, slightly longer than my previous test. Probably a difference in the photo. Still, this is promising.
