Franzis photography softwares I bought were top notch and price reasonably. I love using all Franzis photos editors software sbecause of good quality, ease of use and user friendly. Highly recommended to buy the latest version for the latest photo editors application. I never want to use Lightroom or Photoshop apps once you have use Franzis softwares.

Utterly Fantastic, BTW, I also installed this program on my Win XP, Win Vista and Win 2000; just so one knows that most windows will accept this install. This is an easy to use, programs with most of the bells and whictles that I find quite useful.
You Shall NOT be disappointed!

First given away, v3, 9/25/16. This is the 9th time since then that Franzis has offered an iteration, the last being v5, 31 months ago on 10/20/23. Like other offerings from them, it gets consistently positive reviews. You can see the previous giveaways here:

www.giveawayoftheday.com/?s=BLACK%20WHITE%20projects

I've had it before and used it with good results a couple of times, but don't have it on my current computer, so thanks Franzis and the GotD team for bringing it back.

I´ve enjoyed the Franzis projects giveaways on this website for several years.

As of late, i´ve developed a taste for BW HDR photography. I have an older copy of BW projects 5 given away here back in 2023 if i´m not mistaken.

Before downloading this version 6 giveaway, i went to check the newest version of BW projects at the Franzis website. As it turned out, BW projects 8 professional is on sale right now for $20. A total steal if you ask me. So i went and bought it.

A couple of months ago I had to stop using franzis software since i bought a Sony A6700 camera. There was a "hack" referenced here several times in which you could overwrite freeimage.dll so franzis software could read a broader spectrum of RAW camera files. This hack worked quite well for my old A6000, but it does not work for the A6700.

As it turns out, converting the raw .ARW files from sony to DNG format solves this for good since Franzis software is able to read the DNG format no problem. You can use the FREE DNG converter provided by Adobe to do this. If you pay for an adobe subscription you can do this natively in LR or in PS or in Bridge. Just make sure that within the options to DNG conversion, the "use lossy compression" option is NOT checked. PS and bridge use the same camera raw module but Lightroom uses it´s own version. you might want to check in both places to avoid data loss to your raw files.

If you´ve never used Franzis software, get this free version. If you like it, I would recommend you grab version 8 pro for $20 then.

Thanks for this giveaway.

I am a huge fan of Franzis Projects software and appreciate that they always provide a lifetime licence here.

Hera re some examples of what you can do with Franzis Black and White Projects 6 Pro.

https://the5thc.blogspot.com/2023/02/photo-versions-created-with-franzis.html

https://the5thc.blogspot.com/2025/08/black-and-white-photo-versions-of.html

https://the5thc.blogspot.com/2023/12/franzis-black-and-white-projects.html

An excellent application. Thanks for the Pro version.

Perfect

P.S. to my previous post:

You can use the favourites * to mark LHS Panel presets you like with a particular image then choose "Favourites" at the top to just filter to those, making comparing say 4-5 looks you liked for the current image easier (it is a long list in the Pro version!), but it doesn't do anything to the right panel, so you keep the same choices there. Then optionally deselect them when finished with that image and go back to "All" (or keep just trying those for a while).

Highly recommended!

I already have this so won't be downloading, but I will say once you get used to it I feel it's the best way to convert from Colour to B&W (or B&W to B&W, but if you start with a colour image you can simulate adding a coloured filter to the front of the lens, which can prevent assorted bits of differently coloured scenery ending up as nearly identical grey areas...)

I can certainly make 8 or more totally different BW images from an original colour image. I find it very boring when people do a BW conversion by ticking "Greyscale" in a menu somewhere and being done...

As usual a complicated registration process if it's your first time with Franzis. Do use a real e-mail address with them or it won't be simple next time either.

I wrote this for a previous Giveaway of v6 (not the Pro version) so am modifying it for the Pro version as best as I can (I got v6P from Franzis not GAotD):

To start off load an image and experiment with the canned effects on the left side. Note the boxes at the top of the left panel filter the effects that are listed in the panel, so ignore them initially.

Also try the Film Type on the right side panel (which should start on the “Finalise” tab). At the top of that panel you can choose a colour filter to apply to the original (assuming it's a colour image, the same as putting a coloured filter on your camera lens and using B+W film, which is common with B+W photographers). Either click on a preset or use the sliders (the presets just move the sliders, e.g. Yellow -> 60/120). At the bottom of the panel you can select toning options, which is the same theory of having a collection of presets to set sliders.

On a faster computer you can use the Eye icon on the toolbar to disable the preview mode and show the final image in the main window, which IMHO is worth doing.

Changing to "Expert" in the right panel you can add filters from the list at the top, select them in the middle of the panel and tweak their effects at the bottom (may need scrolling down). (I'd ignore that until you are comfortable using it - you may never want to play here, or possibly just tweak one thing the preset you're using set up.)

When saving the final image note that the first dialog, where it asks for the title, is going to write that over the image, it isn't the file name.

The main disadvantage is the lack of Undo operations.

The thing to get your brain around is it a huge pile of image processing tools, which are gathered together into presets in the left pane. All those options do is select a bunch of processing tools and choose options for them, so they are infinitely tweakable in the right pane.

P.S. This version supports Raw files so, here's my instructions to add raw support for more recent (although not very recent) cameras. It is possibly they re-packaged it to fix this already.

Usually the GAotD releases come with an old Raw file import library (e.g. from 2014) so straight-out-of-the-box won't support more recent cameras. However you can just copy a later version of FreeImage.dll over the one in the program's directory to help with that (although it's still not all that up-to-date).

Look in "C:\Program Files\Franzis\BLACK WHITE projects 6 professional" and see it has an old version of FreeImage.dll, which is the library that decodes Raw images from your camera (you don't care if you only plan to use it with JPEGs). I replaced this with the newest version I have (once I've shut the program down so don't have a sharing error) which is:
FreeImage.dll 6,924,800 bytes 26-02-19
Alas usually you can download later versions from Franzis, but the downloads haven't been updated so you have to go to:
https://freeimage.sourceforge.io/download.html
and download the DLL (second link down the page)
Unzip the archive and choose the correct copy (x32/x64 - if you're running the 32-bit version of Windows your computer won't have a directory "C:\Program Files (x86)") of FreeImage.dll from FreeImage\Dist (which is 3.18.0.0, same as the one I used). I did install and test this exact file and it does work with supported cameras. You don't need the archive afterwards.

Note these are still not completely up-to-date, so recent cameras may not have Raw support and you have to use the JPG or make a 16-bit TIF file in your favourite Raw processing software.

If you have a Mac you'll need to get the OSX version of FreeImage from SourceForge and replace the existing one, wherever it might be.