I recently took this photo of a friend and her family.  It was VERY backlit and am needing some help with the background.  I have tried to add another layer in PS with a blue sky and blend it in, but it hasn't come out looking good yet.  Please help...I am wanting to make this a nice gift for her. 

This is my very first post, so go easy on me...but be honest as well.   :)

 Welcome to the forum!

There are better Photoshoppers here than me, so I'll leave it to them to help you fix the image. 

Using fill flash might have saved you some of this agita... 

Keep posting!

Dave

I agree...a fill flash would have saved me a lot of time on this...and a few less headaches.  Thanks for the reply.  I can't wait to hear from some of the Photoshoppers out there. 

BTW...this is a wonderful place to learn.  What a great community.

 Welcome to Mpix.

You need Lowry for this one. He is a genious at this :) 

S

 Here's a quick play, sorry no finesse but I have to go to work quick ;)

 Hi Asikes,

At least you recognized the fact that a nice sky would really make the shot look a lot better.  I see so many posts where they just leave the blown out sky and the question is about something else in the shot.

A gradiant will be really hard because of the leaves, whether you are masking or erasing the leaves are just going to be a pain in the butt. I did this with one click.  I use PSP and it has a tool called color changer.  One click and it filled in the sky.  I also took out the half way house bottom left.  Just looked funny with half of it there and the other half blown out.

You say you are using PS which I assume is Photoshop but I know a lot of people who say that are really using Elements.  Not knowing exactly what you are using,  I can only give you a general guideline to find the equivelent of the Color Changer.

Hope that helps.

LaDair

 Here it is with a deeper toned sky.  The idea being, you always have control over how far you want to take it for the look you like.

LaDair

Thanks...

I am using CS3 in case that helps. 

I copied the tree from the other side to get rid of as much sky as possible. Just an idea.  I really like your grouping. You got a good overall shape and worked with the red and blue shirts. Also, that little girl in the front is adorble. Good job. 

That is a good suggestion. 

I cannot say how much I appreciate everyone's help on this.  I am pretty inexperienced with Photoshop and really only know enough to be dangerous at this point.  :)  Give me some time...and who knows. 

 Everyone....keep those suggestions coming. 

I really like the last play with adding more trees. I think you did a great job on posing to. Very nice looking family. And of course being from Kansas love the shirts! :) lol

 I didn't want to start all over, so I cheated and took Ladairs edit (which was fine to begin with) but I wanted to see what it would look like if I added some clouds and saturation. I also dodged there faces with the highlight brush.

You can get cloud brushes from the adobe exchange. I'm pretty sure that is where I got mine. 

 Amazing...I need to figure out how you did the cloud brushes.  That is awesome.  Much better than finding a sky with clouds and adding it in.  This looks very natural.