Help with sky replacement

[Seahawk]

Hey all,

So I have already tried Damien's way replacement technique and I am not getting the results desired. The tree is giving me tons of issues so I'm wondering if someone else knows how to make this sky swap work.

Here are the two images. I am trying to put the blue sky with clouds behind the tree.

[Damien Symonds]

May I see your attempt?

[Seahawk]

I retried my attempt this morning and this is what I came up with.

[Damien Symonds]

That looks fabulous!  But you shouldn't have blurred the sky.

Can you turn off the blur and show me?

[Seahawk]

Took the blur layer off. It just now has the brightness/contrast layer.

 

[Damien Symonds]

It's fabulous.  All that remains is a very slight gradient mask from the bottom up.

[Seahawk]

4 minutes ago, Damien Symonds said:

It's fabulous.  All that remains is a very slight gradient mask from the bottom up.

Awesome, thank you so much!