I didn't record my search strings but they were something like "Helicon Focus save output image and retouch later".

You're a star Catherine! That's exactly what I want, thank you
I searched the Forum and a Google search before posting but nothing turned up.

Hi all,

Scenario:
I load a stack of images and render them to an output image.
I then start retouching the output image and spend 30 mins retouching.
I then need to stop and do something else. I don't want to lose my edits if the computer crashes etc so I save the retouched image to a file and exit ...