Computing only one byte of a cryptographically secure hash function
For SHA-256, given its structure, the savings achievable when computing a single byte of the output is small. Argument: the computation consists of 64 rounds in cascade (or several times that for input of at least 56 bytes); full diffusion is achieved after 8 rounds, therefore all but the last 7 rounds must be computed in full (and then a large fraction of the rest, varying with which byte is kept), therefore savings are (much) less than 7/64 on the rounds, and a little extra operation on the output (worth less than 8 32-bit additions). Thanks to tylo for reporting that diffusion is much slower than I stated.

This is largely true for all common hash functions, but we can not generalize to any hash function. It is easy to construct a hash function of cost about proportional to the width needed (but somewhat inefficient, or insecure).