They have different purposes: if you want to create HDR images, Aurora is better. For general photo developing Luminar is better. If you have a single photo and want software to make it better for you and don't want to touch anything, PhotoLemur is better. Also from Skylum and free: https://skylum.com/pp
Personally, I like Luminar the best of the Skylum offerings because I don't generally take multiple exposures of the same shot to create a "real" HDR image. So, if you're not doing that I would use Luminar which is already super easy. But then if I actually want to invest time and effort into developing the image it's back to the old Lightroom/Photoshop combo.
No, the license key is permanent. But you may want to keep the install file handy because after the promo period, Skylum might not have Aurora HDR 2018 available for download.
Downloaded it but when I click on it to install, after asking if I want to run the file, and I click yes, nothing happens. Maybe my computer is too crap for it, I dunno. Oh well.
