Top 10 Best Websites You can Get Free HDR Photos [2023 Updated]
Last Updated on February 23, 2023 by Peter Wood
The breath-taking HDR images should be so impressive.
When you want to find some free HDR images, you can either use an HDR camera to take them by yourself or download some free HDR pictures from photo stock websites.
You can find hundreds of stunning HDR photos in Shutterstock, which costs about US$10.00.
The article provides the top 10 websites that you can get HDR free and teach you how to make your HDR photo with the professional HDR software.
- Part 1. Top 10 Websites You can Get Free HDR
- Free HDRI – Pixabay
- Free HDR - Pexels
- Free HDR Images - Freeimages
- Free HDRs - Skitterphoto
- Free HDR - Unsplash
- Free HDRIs – HDRI Haven
- Free HDR – HDRMAPS
- Free HDR – Aversis 3D
- Free HDR – HDRI-SKIES
- Free HDR – Textures
- Part 2. How to Make Your Own Free HDR with Your Shot Photos
Part 1. Top 10 Websites You can Get Free HDR
1. Free HDRI – Pixabay
Pixabay is not a free photo stock website, but there are 650,000 free high-quality photos in June 2016, illustrations, vectors graphics, and film footage, including hundreds of free HDR images.
To get the HDR free, you have to register as a member of Pixabay first.
The interactive online community supports 20 languages. You can use a public API (Application Programming Interface) to search for free HDR images.
Just search for HDR free or check HDR photos under Creative Commons license CC0.
2. Free HDR - Pexels
Pexels provides free stock photos, but it is much famous for the Search Engine, that is, you are not only able to find free HDR from Pexels but also other free stock photo websites.
Just inform some tips more helpful, you can find the related free HDR websites from the information provided by Pexels.
When you search for free HDRIs or other photos, you can only find some free HDRs from Pixabay or other websites.
You might still have to find more HDR free from the original ones.
3. Free HDR Images - Freeimages
Freeimages is a free photo stock with over 390,000 photos, including free HDR in different categories.
Once you enter the HDR keyword, you can find cloud HDR, HDR sky, HDR landscape, and other HDR categories. This free HDR website provides hundreds of free HDR photos with some categories.
When you need to compare the best HDR effects, it should be the best place to search for free HDR in a certain category.
You can easily find one HDR image according to your requirement.
4. Free HDRs - Skitterphoto
Skitterphoto should be another place to get photo HDR free. Skitter photo might not be a large photo stock as Pexels or Pixabay, but Skitter Photo provides a whole category for Best Free HDR Photography.
Just as mentioned, you can find the best ones in the category.
If you want to find the whole stock for free HDR, you can use click the tag of any free HDR photo to access all the files.
Just take full advantage of the free HDR stock of Skitterphoto.
5. Free HDR - Unsplash
Unsplash is free photo stock that provides many photos HDR free.
But actually, when you search for free HDR, you might not find a result. It is because the tags for HDR is not available.
You have to register to add the tags for the uploaded photos.
Unsplash is a good platform for different collections and photographers.
If you find some HDR photographers or related collections for HDR, you can find the free HDR accordingly.
6. Free HDRIs – HDRI Haven
HDRI Haven is a website that specialized in offering high-quality HDR images for free without catching them.
All HDRIs on this website are CC0 (public domain) without paywalls, accounts, or email spam. You can download any HDR photo on this website and use it as you wish.
This website is established by Greg Zaal who is a CG artist and Open Source advocate. The free HDR pictures are categorized by the different environments and let you easy to find the specific HDR photos you need.
All the free HDR photography in this HDRI Haven is 134 megapixels which are enough to give you crystal clear reflections.
Besides, the HDRIs are up to 26 EVs of dynamic range and producing extremely realistic lighting.
7. Free HDR – HDRMAPS
HDRMAPS.com, which is UK based company, is an online-shop offering the highest quality CG texture including HDR and LDR skydomes, full spherical HDRI Maps, and backplate pictures (mostly skies).
There is a section named Freebies where you can get free HDR pictures.
However, you need to know that you cannot redistribute or share any files found here.
If you need it and want to share, simply link to a product page on hdrmaps.com. Besides royalty-free images, licenses are not transferable.
8. Free HDR – Aversis 3D
Aversis 3D provides all kinds of goodies related to 3D computer graphics. It is a well-known source for free V-ray tutorials and HDRI maps which are of the highest quality available on the Internet.
Although it is not free for HDRIs, they are still at a very reasonable priced. And in their HDIR section, they still offer some free HDR images.
The most advantage of their HDR images would be high-quality with high resolution (10,000 x 5,000px), highest dynamic range, variation in lighting and scenes, optimized exposure and white balance, beautiful and useful environments, and more.
9. Free HDR – HDRI-SKIES
HDRI-SKIES is a growing service with high quality, full spherical HDR sky maps available in two versions.
One is free for commercial and non-commercial used in 2k resolutions and another is paid in full resolution up to 20k HDIR skies with matching backplates in .dng and .jpg formats.
HDRI-SKIES is focused on delivering very high-quality different kind of HDRI maps, textures, panoramic images in one place for free and at a reasonable price. They try to provide new photos and interesting material every week to be published.
The 360° HDRI SKIES category on the top menu will contain the free HDR sky for you to download free. Just add the image you like to the shopping cart and check out without paying a penny to get the download file. That is easy!
10. Free HDR – Textures
Textures.com is a website not only offers free HDR images but also all sorts of digital picture materials including fabrics, wood, metal, bricks, plastic, and many more.
It can offer 15 images for free every day to download. If you need more or bigger images, you may need to purchase a credit pack or a subscription.
The website is established in 2005 and has more than 120,000 images and continues increasing every week. Here in its categories where you can get free HDR photos, such as HDR Skies and HDR Spheres.
Besides the above free HDR websites, some other websites also provide a few HDR free, such as Barn Images, Fancycrave, and others.
Part 2. How to Make Your Free HDR with Your Shot Photos
Besides downloading HDR free from HDRI stock websites, it is still the best option to take a desired HDR free if you have an HDR camera. You can use some free HDR software to merge what you have taken first. Of course, you can also apply some HDR effects to turn an ordinary photo into an HDR one.
1. Make HDRI Free on Windows 10/8/7 and macOS
WidsMob HDR is an all-in-one HDR maker that enables you to create standard HDR and apply HDR filters. It can create free HDR images from a single photo or a series of bracketed photos with multiple HDR modes. It provides multiple HDR filters and multiple advanced settings, including color enhancement, color correction, smart tone, image radiance, color filters, vignettes, and HDR de-noise.
1. Make a single shot or a series of bracketed images into free HDR images.
2. Provide default HDR templates to apply a stunning HDR filter in one click.
3. Support most RAW files from HDR cameras as well as JPEG/JPG files.
4. Polish the HDR files with noise reduction, HDR colors, smart tones, etc.
Step 1. Download and install WidsMob HDR on your computer, you can launch the program and click the Add Photos button to import the photos. Just drag-n-drop the desired photos you want to edit into the program. It supports both RAW photos and JPEG files from your cameras.
Step 2. Select the Bracketed mode to stitch the images with different exposures into a single HDR photo or choose the Single Photo mode to apply some stunning HDR effects. After that, select the photos for the mode before clicking the Next button to continue the process.
Step 3. Once you have merged the HDR photo, you can choose an HDR effect from the Effect menu. It provides different presets with combined brightness, saturation, and contrast. Moreover, you can get different free HDR photos simply from one image with multiple effects.
Step 4. Go to the Advanced menu, you can tweak the other settings, such as color enhancement, color correction, contrast enhancement, smart tone filters, image radiance settings, color filters, and HDR de-noise effects. After that, you can click the Save As button to export the free HDR file.
You can also watch the video guide to get more detailed instruction:
2. Make HDR Free on Windows 10/8/7
Eclipse HDR is an HDR program, which can create stunning photos with easy-to-use HDR on Windows PC. Usually, you need 3 photos images to make an HDR picture. With Eclipse HDR you only need 1 image.
Step 1. Upload your photo to the Eclipse HDR.
Step 2. Adjust a single HDR slider to correct and enhance your photos while keeping a natural, realistic look.
Step 3. When you are satisfied with the HDR effect, you can save your HDR image to your computer.
It would be nice to turn your photo into HDR rather than download others’ free HDRI online. If you are using Mac, this program may not help you as it only supports Windows PC. Then you can check the following HDR software for Mac.
It is easy, right? In this article, we introduce you to 10 great websites to download free HDR and also give you a tutorial on making your free HDR images with some professional HDR software.