About the Image(s)

The meadow photo was my starting point, but I wanted a few hills in the distance so I added the sky photo after cropping it a bit on the bottom. Those two layers were merged into one. Next, I added the door and did some lens correction so everything was straight and level. The surrounding elements were added around the door, using masks to get rid of unwanted areas. The perspective warp tool was used to “open” the door. I then created a locked group of just those layers so I could easily move them around and figure out the best placement on the meadow.

I wanted the major part of the background to be dark and the area visible through the door to be much brighter, so I duplicated the meadow/sky and greatly darkened the top layer for the main background, using brightness and contrast adjustment. I kept the original brighter layer underneath and used a mask on the dark layer to erase the area inside the door and in front of the door to make it look like the sunlight was flooding out.

Lastly, I added a few flowers in the foreground, a couple walking into the distance, a tree, and the respective shadows. A slight oil paint filter was applied over all.