Obv it would be better if it took less time, but I’d rather wait a few minutes longer and get a usable result than cut corners and get a suboptimal one. Adobe take the latter approach, which can be pragmatic if you need to make the tradeoff in the speed rather than quality direction.
For the enthusiast or those who use photography purely as art (including those who change the image from what was seen to what one “wanted”, such as changing the sky to some dramatic background), the time to export may not be significant. It is not a matter of having a “suboptimal” exported image, as the final decision in many cases is made by the client, not the photographer. If the client “likes” and “accepts” the suboptimal image, such an outcome often is sufficient. This especially can be the case if the image set before culling is large (say several hundred) and even the culled images (I personally use FastRawViewer for intake and culling) could be one hundred. Thus, export times can be important to a working photographer (even one with “standards”).
UPDATE : OP here. Well, interesting ! I found that the export times are blisteringly fast on my i7 5070Ti Win 11 rig IF I do not have Photoshop open simultaneously and do not export straight into Photoshop. If I just export to a file then PL9 exports very fast indeed, even with AI edits. The export time is quadrupled if I “export to application” into Photoshop (once PS is open, not the very first time when PS is not yet open and the export process opens it). My conclusion is that running PS and PL simultaneously so you can export straight into PS just doesn’t provide PL with enough of the GPU VRAM and/or processing power. Let me know if you can reproduce this folks.
This adventure (or nightmare?) awaits me in the next few days and I really hate going through all the applications to get them working in case they are affected.
The current operating system is on one of the NVMe and I don’t think it’s necessary to replace it just yet, but maybe I’ll ask my friend who built this machine (I replaced the GPU and PSU in early 2025 → here and follow).
In any case, this will be the litmus test for the newly introduced “deauthorization system.”
I’m using a Dell Inspiron 16 laptop w/32 GB RAM, Core 7 processor and Intel graphics with 2GB. Only got it in June, and found that under Photolab 8 the change from my older Win 10 laptop w/ 8GB was like boarding a rocket ship - 100% JPEG exports with full noise reduction went from nearly an hour to less than a minute.
Installed PL 9 and experimented with a single AI mask of a bird to exclude it from noise reduction on the background (which I haven’t really figured out how to do) and the export time on the image went up to five minutes.
I can live with that, but I’d really appreciate clear instructions how to set different noise reduction settings for the masked area and background! The lengthy document detailing PL 9’s features says it’s possible to exclude adjustments from affecting the masked area, but that’s just a passing comment, not instructions.
What’s needed is access, from inside the Local Adjustments tool, to all of the normal controls!
All fine, I just mentioned my experience.
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I understand that. My response was mostly aimed at others who might read your post and make inaccurate assumptions based on it.
Mark