World Background Image: Environment Texture does not scale right I try to use a background image for the World. I read that HDR images are best for that - so I went out and took an HDR image. But I cannot get this image scaled and applied right to my scene, it seems to be bended and stretched all over. I would like to see the whole image in the background of my object at once. 

Tried to apply a Texture Coordinate Node and a Mapping Node and mess with the settings for quite a while now with no success. Even other answers like this one here did not help. Does it have sth. to do with the format and resolution of my image? Are there other settings I have to adjust? 

This the downloadable image I try to use (HDR 3264 × 2448 jpeg 4:3) : 
Outdoor Scene
The image you are using is not an Environment texture, it is a regular High definition photograph. You can't plug such an image into an Environment texture node, as they have their own type of mapping.

My recommended solution is to set it up as a regular image texture with this as your mapping:



The result is this:



You can then use the mapping node to adjust how your image fits into the scene.