Photoshopping a Photo

Tonight I worked on a photo I took a few years ago of my son and grandson in San Diego. It was a good shot of the two of them looking at each other. But the background was really cluttered. I had done some work on it a year ago when I was just learning Photoshop, and I got a fair-to-middlin creation where I replaced the people and landscaping in the background with a nice shot of the sky with some floating clouds. But I have learned a lot in the past year, and I realized that my old techniques were pretty crude. So I opened the original on my computer tonight and totally redid the photo. I used masking to remove the background, and some new brush techniques to paint back in the strands of hair over their heads so it really looks like the sky belongs there after I slip the sky in on a lower layer. I did some other things, adjusted the overall contrast, and recropped the picture to a better size. It turned out pretty good, but I am going to leave it alone now and take another look at it tomorrow. I have discovered that sometimes the wonderful things I think I have done at night don't always look so spectacular the next day. We will see. LOL This is my draft. Click on it to view the larger picture.