Big thanks to Fanzis and its team for all great presents for lifetime. Use them often and am thankful for every of it.
Thanks to giveawayoftheday too.

Franzis always and everything! Amazing programs!

Mike L. below said it has Raw support so I'll include my previous notes on getting a later version of the Raw library if it ships with an old one... as they tend to...

Look in "C:\Program Files\Franzis\HDR projects 5" 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 6924,800 .a.. 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 (or just try 3-5 bracketed JPGs).
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 (sorry, not my thing).

This is a stripped down version of HDR projects professional. The normal projects versions do not include the RAW module, but this version does include it, which in my opinion is very useful and necessary.

For example if you work with RAW images, the RAW module allows you to tweak:

White balance
Denoising/Sharpness
Color balance
Exposure
Detail
Colour
Palette

Distortion ( you can find pillow / barrel lens distortion correction in here )
of RAW images before you treat your HDR bracket as a stack in the main program window.

The main program window lets you weight each photo´s importance individually within the stack and it allows you to tweak other settings such as;

Scenario
Entropy HDR smoothing
Ghosting Correction
Contrast range

The description leads you to believe that this is just a plugin, but it is a standalone application. The installer does not include a photoshop plugin though. It does include the lightroom plugin.

In Lightroom you can create your HDR stack and then export your photo to Pure HDR. Pure HDR will present you with a “Send to Lightroom” button once you finish your edits. I would recommend creating the stack in Pure HDR first and then opening the stack in Lightroom

There is no Photoshop functionality but you can still create the stack and tweak settings in Pure HDR, and then save the final image, which you can then open in Photoshop and do further edits.

If you don´t like the way in which Lightroom handles an HDR stack, aligning and deghosting then this app will work very well for you. It will allow you to manage virtually every setting you might think of tweaking before moving on to the develop module in lightroom.

If you already own any of the HDR projects versions, this one will disappoint you because you will not be able to do much with your image after creating your initial stack.

Big shout out to Franzis for creating world class software.

Hi guys, I have HDR projects 5 - V5.52.02653 anyone know what the difference is to this Pure HDR?

Downloaded it and tried it our on one image. It is working well- Package includes institutions on how to use it.
However, to register the programme is far too complicated. Copy and paste link in the instructions. Then you fill out your email address. Then the link in the email to receive the code.
Pease can we have a code included in the documentation? Keep it simple!

Is it a standalone program or does it need Photoshop or Lightroom? Does the plugin work with old Photoshop (CS5) too?