Is it common practice to render low settings and touch up in photoshop? I’d imagine if time were an issue or you simply didnt want to wait, you would render at a lower quality (for a quicker render) then touchup in photoshop or whatever editor you use.
Was just wondering if this was a thing.
It’s not recommended but I have done that in a pinch or when using unbiased renderers that leave fireflies on renders. I duplicate the base layer and run a dust and scratches on the layer (or Neat Image if it’s more uniform) and then mask the layer completely. Then I paint in areas where I want to remove noise.
I did a similar thing with a last-minute animation gig in Nuke with its denoise plug-in.
Taking into account that you time more valuable than computers time, it may has no sense, let computer do your job they was created for that.
From the other side, there are some things which slow down render dramatically but could be easily fixed in post almost automatically noise from low light samples, for example, become acceptable after degrain.
I sometimes do that for really high res renders that I need done in a really short time within an hour or something obnoxious like that. I’ll spend 15-20 min to just go in with the blur tool and manually blur any obviously aliased edges. It usually turns out pretty well.