The raw developing routines have already been optimized all the way down to machine cycles.  Given the DCraw processing, lens correction, noise filtering, color profiling, and sharpening being done, it just can't go any faster.  One tip I would give is to try to edit your raws in batches if you know you have more than one.  For example, if you have 4 raws to edit, select all 4 and use the multi-refine feature where you can click to move to the next once you are done with the first, and so on.  That way when you exit the refine tool, all four raws will be developed at the same time and because QU uses multithreading, it can build 4 (or up to 7 or 8 depending on the CPU) in the same amount of time it takes to build one.

Regards,
Mike

Thanks guys.

I vote that my best  tip for 2016.

I always used Batch RAW Refine to copy settings from one RAW to the batch. I never thought of altering a RAW and moving on to the next - and then, once the batch is corrected, calling up another batch. I had not realised that batch two was workable as the cache for batch one was being done in the background.

I have an eight core machine. Does that suggest I'd be better off working in batches of eight?

That advice will go a long way to satisfying my wish to move the Fill slider a point or two one way or another - noted in my other 'wish'.

Thanks again.

Tony

One little tidbit that can help.  If you have an 8 core system (QU shows the number of cores on the splash screen when you start up) and you have multithreading set to "Auto", it'll use 7 cores for processing.  It leaves one core unused for the main UI so that it doesn't slow you down if you do other things while thumbs/cache are building.  So the optimal setup would probably be to keep multithreading set to auto and do 7 raws at a time.  That way you have one core free to move on to the next batch of 7 and refine those without slowing you down.

Mike