Renders take forever to complete

I keep running into problems getting renders to finish or finish in a timely manner. My files are 4500 X 5400 and the one's I am using today are right around 1.5M. I was trying to using Cartoon Creator and it appears to be using RAM to render and not the CPU's most of the render. I have found this problem with other filters also. Anytime I am having a problem I am noticing that the filter is using RAM and not CPU's to render for a lot of the render. I have 16G of RAM and it was showing 80+% used and it did complete the render but took around 30 minutes.

If anyone can shed any light on why this is taking so long and if there is anything I can do to speed it up I will be grateful. It completed the draft files ok and in an ok amount of time but I do need the other size file for the end result. At this point I am thinking large file size is a problem in Filter Forge. Is that what other's have found? Thank you.

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leil08 wrote: I have been working for months with 6000x4000 images and I understand your problems with some filters. You need at least 32 GB of RAM, better if 64 GB or more, and a powerful CPU, preferably with a desktop or gamer laptop.

I am working on getting a new computer and thanks for letting me know that my problems should be solved after that .

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leil08 wrote: Honestly, the problem will never be solved with some filters that are obviously designed for creating textures or instagram-like images and not for big photographic/artistic images. A large amount of RAM and processor cores helps a lot, though.

Got it, my friend that recommended Filter Forge was not aware of the large file problems, I don't think most people are. I guess I need to try to piece my files into smaller pieces, do FF and than put them back together. That is what I have done in the past and probably need to consider that going forward.

Thank you, your feedback really helps.

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emme wrote: This generally happens when using bitmap components (like blur) on large images. The higher the radius of the bitmap component, the slower things get - so you could try to lower the radius to speed things up. Best to avoid using bitmap based components on large images if possible. More info in the user manual under Bitmap-Based Components.

Thank you. Where is the user manual? Does it explain what the components do? I am totally unaware there is a user manual. That could be sooooo helpful. Thank you for your suggestion and if you can tell me a bit more about the user manual that would be great.