New sky

I have added a new sky to this image of Harlech Beach as I was never happy with the original as it was badly blown out. The new sky came from the same time of day (roughly) but the camera was pointing in a slightly different direction further along the beach.

I replaced the sky by creating a mask of the land by selecting the blue channel, duplicating it and then messing about with levels and brushes until I had a black mask on a white background. Then selected all channels and loaded the mask as a selection on the layers palette. I then moved the selected land onto the image with the sky and did a bit of lens correction. I free transformed the sky image to get rid of the sun (as I'd shot straight into it) and cropped. I then burnt in the lighter edges around the grass.

I saw this technique on Ephotozine.tv for selecting hair and thought it might work well for the grass in this image. I will upload the original 2 images for reference.

Critique on the application of the technique and the final result are what I'm after.

Thanks in advance.

Title:	New sky
Username:	zander
Uploaded:	16 Oct 2008 - 11:16 PM
Camera:	Canon PowerShot A80
Tags:	Digitally manipulated, Harlech beach, Landscape / travel
Votes:	Voting Disabled
	Critique Wanted
	Modifications Welcome (Upload a Modification)
	Variant - Before and After

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