Hi!
I would like to share a script which I recently wrote for our little studio blendFX. It enables you to store all render relevant cycles settings, such as PT, BPT, samples, bounces, etc. together with the render slots in order to help you with the process of finding the best render settings by tweaking sample and bounces parameters of the Cycles render engine and comparing it to previous results using the render slots in the Image Editor.
There are three ways to use it. First you can store the current settings by pressing the Quick Save Settings button. Now you can tweak all cycles render settings, rerender, compare and restore the previous settings by pressing the Quick Restore Settings button. But you can also use the 8 render slots of the image editor for this. Enable the Slot Recording Button to save your settings of the current slot. As long as the button is enabled the addon will store the render settings stored after each render in the current slot.
But you can also store your settings permanently as a preset. (I found the already available cycles presets not very useful, because most of the time I want to tweak bounces and samples together, not separated)
Here’s a demo: https://youtu.be/a3FI_n6vH64
(That video is a bit outdated, UI wise)
Here’s the link: https://github.com/blendfx/blender/blob/master/render_tweaker.py
If you find bugs, just let me know!