I am new to PS and have been messing about with the photo below. I've managed to drop a decent sky on it as the original was washed out.
But it has not gone too well around the trees as the zoom below shows:-
The sky is a separate layer and has a gradient applied, can anyone tell me how I can blend the area by the trees better? I'm using CS5
I know it doesn't help you much but I'd say the picture looks ok. can't tell its blended really.
for something like that cut the tree out to a new layer over the sky and set the blend mode to darken would be the quick method. Otherwise a long time spent masking it out (use a layer mask as it doesnt destroy the original)
Its been a while since I used PS last. But I'd start by drawing a marquee around the trees, then you can select by colour (I'm afraid I can't remember exactly how to do this), select the white in the trees (old sky) and turn the opacity down. Have fun getting the sky right in the reflections!
you may also want to add the sky into the reflection of the water.
You shouldn't have put a mask on it - imagine using a grad filter on a camera (old school) and the grad would be through everything, not just the sky. If you run a grad through the top part of the image and multiply it in you would barely notice the colour as it runs over the trees.
http://www2.picturepush.com/photo/a/6058650/img/usefull-info/Alpha-channel-selection-copy.jpg
very good tutorial here, but you'll have to use some cunning google translate if you don't understand dutch...
The sky and the water contradict each other, in reflection and also in colour, and make the scene look unnatural. What does the original look like? Did you (can you) drop the exposure on the whole image? In Lightroom, I'd be reducing the exposure, seeing what Recovery could achieve, bringing some more blacks in and pushing the contrast a little before I went anywhere near trying to deal with the sky. Given that the water is always going to give the original sky away, I think you need to keep adjustments there to a minimum if you want to maintain a natural feel.
your sky fades to white anyhow, so put a mask on your sky and use the edge of a big brush to paint on the mask between the sky and the trees you should be able to smooth it off convincingly enough.. Also your sky is too blue, chill that out a bit.
Thanks all, good points about the water/sky mismatch. Here's the original though the light was really flat on the day of the ride.
The original is a good shot.. Why not just select the sky and play with the colour balance to add some more depth rather than transposing something in that doesn't look like it belongs there? Just to take out the flatness of the white?
you would be better isolating the water then using selective colour to grab the sky and use curve and hue/saturation to boost the values in the sky.
blur tool on tree tops?
I think you might be right, give me an hour or so and I'll have a play with the original sky. Not bad for a self portrait 
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJrvihPXLTo
Refine edge tool in CS5 should sort you right out.
Or how's about - get rid of the trees?
If you zoom in you can make out an odd shape in the distance
And please straighten that horizon before all the water pours out that lake... 
Now you buggers are just giving me extra work!
Stratobiker how did you remove the tree?
I thought it was easier to cut around the rider than cut around the tree. So I used the pen tool to cut around the rider and a section of sky to make a new layer, then I used the brightness/contrast adjustment for that layer to make it the same colour as the rest of the sky.
HTH
SB
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