Inspiring

Question

APE2027 slow export when using "Render at Maximum Depth"

Forum|Forum|4 days ago
October 2, 2026
9 replies
60 views

I use Premiere Elements 2027 and generally find it very stable. However, when I apply the HSL Tuner effect and enable Render at Maximum Depth, export becomes approximately four to five times slower.

I wanted to use Maximum Depth to achieve the best possible image quality. However, CPU usage remains low during the slow export, including on individual cores, and the GPU also appears underutilized.

I have experienced similar severe slowdowns in earlier versions of Premiere Elements and with some other effects, although not with all effects.

Could Adobe please investigate this interaction and consider modernizing HSL Tuner with proper GPU acceleration? It is a very useful tool for basic selective color correction, but its current rendering performance makes it difficult to use with maximum-quality settings.

Amit Kumar Gupta

Adobe Employee

We attempted to reproduce the behavior on our test systems but were unable to observe the same export slowdown when using HSL Tuner with Render at Maximum Depth enabled.
This is a CPU effect but export time is same with max depth checked.
We would like to investigate further on what could be causing this issue.
Please provide some additional information like system info, project settings, timeline length, number of tracks used.
Please check with a single clip simple project if you still see the issue.

Ann Bens

Community Expert

Try the color correction and grading tool (Lumetri) instead of the HSL effect.

T

tomek398Author

Inspiring

Thanks for the suggestion, but the built-in Color Correction & Grading tool (Lumetri) operates much more globally. It simply isn't as precise or effective as the HSL Tuner when it comes to isolating and tweaking specific color channels.

A prime example is footage from GoPro cameras. They often introduce a specific, warm, yellowish-orange color cast on skin tones. With a global color tool, adjusting the temperature or saturation to fix the face usually ends up ruining the rest of the scene (like making the background look dull or overly cold).

With the HSL Tuner, I can specifically target just the orange/yellow hue and drop its saturation or tweak its lightness, making skin tones look completely natural again without affecting the vibrant blue of the sky or the surrounding environment. That targeted control is exactly why HSL is essential here.

John T Smith

Community Expert

I do not know if the Adobe developers read here, so you might post in

https://community.adobe.com/feature-requests-603

John T Smith

Community Expert

I use v2021 and don’t do the same workflow, so this is only my GUESS (and a not very good example)

Go to a grocery store and buy a 4 pound bag of sugar… it is easy to carry out

Now go to a builder’s supply and buy an 80 pound bag of concrete mix… you work a lot harder to carry that bag out than you did with a 4 pound bag

To me, it seems logical that rendering at maximum depth will take longer… and, the GPU is only used when the specific effect is designed to use the GPU… this link is about Premiere, not Premiere Elements, but the idea is the same

https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere/desktop/get-started/technical-requirements/hardware-accelerated-decoding-and-encoding.html

T

tomek398Author

Inspiring

Thank you for your reply, but I think you may have misunderstood the core of my issue, even though I tried to explain it clearly.

I completely understand the basic logic that processing more data takes more time. That is obvious. My concern is not about the fact that it takes longer, but about the scale of the performance drop and how the system resources are being utilized.

An export time jumping from 30 minutes to 2 hours or more just by enabling Render at Maximum Depth is a drastic increase that is hard to justify, especially given the hardware behavior:

Hardware Bottleneck / Low Utilization: As I mentioned in my original post, neither my CPU nor my GPU is being heavily utilized during this process. Instead of seeing all cores/threads maxed out to handle the heavy workload, I see very low overall utilization. If the system is not actually working hard, it suggests a bottleneck elsewhere in the rendering pipeline rather than a simple lack of compute power.
Optimization & GPU Acceleration: If combining HSL with Render at Maximum Depth causes such a severe slowdown without maxing out system resources, it points to either a software optimization issue, memory bandwidth limitations, or a CPU-bound thread lock. If this effect is not GPU-accelerated, it clearly demonstrates why it needs to be, or at least why the CPU multithreading efficiency needs attention here.

Leaving this behavior as-is effectively renders the combination of HSL and Maximum Depth unusable in real-world workflows, which is a shame.

T

tomek398Author

Inspiring

HSL Tuner may appear to be a niche effect, but it is actually a very useful and easy-to-use color-correction tool. It is particularly helpful for footage from popular action cameras and similar consumer devices. Such footage can have a characteristic color cast or unnatural rendering of certain colors. HSL Tuner makes it easy to correct individual color ranges, restore more natural skin tones, and improve skies or vegetation without changing the entire image.

It is a valuable tool for achieving natural and attractive colors, but its current rendering performance makes it difficult to use with maximum-quality settings.

Ann Bens

Community Expert

If you want to do proper color correction might want to look for more professional editing software.

T

tomek398Author

Inspiring

Why should I do that and spend more money on different software when the right tool is already present in APE? The issue is that it seems to be an "outdated" piece of code, as a result, it is poorly optimized and lacks GPU acceleration.

Other color adjustment tools in APE are quite useful, but they operate more globally and are nowhere near as effective at targeting individual colors as the HSL Tuner.

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