Compositor Rewrite: Massive Performance Boost for Image Compositing

2025-03-27
Compositor Rewrite: Massive Performance Boost for Image Compositing

The Compositor image compositing engine has been rewritten, resulting in significant performance improvements. Performance gains are particularly noticeable in certain node configurations; caching of static resources like images is optimized, and memory usage is reduced on node setups with many nodes operating on pixels. Filter nodes are dramatically faster: Levels is up to 10x faster, Filter and Kuwahara are twice as fast, Blur nodes are up to four times faster, the Glare filter is 6x more performant and more advanced, and Pixelate is 9x faster. Adjusting compositor node trees is also significantly faster and more interactive, as the compositor now avoids computing outputs not viewed by the user through the backdrop or image editor. The overall compositing experience should feel much more responsive, whether using the CPU or GPU.

Development image compositing