Merging two pictures together

[blueskylondon]

Folks,
any ideas?
I am looking to merge elegantly the sea/lava picutre with the sunset and I am failing at providing a photo realistic result.
I tried creating masks using alpha channels, played with gradients on layer masks etc, ping ChatGPT extensively.
Thoughts on how to proceed? Do I miss something?
best,
Dan

 

[IamSam]

Layer mask and the Brush Tool. Use a large soft round brush set to 0% hardness and 1% to 2% flow and work the new cloud BG into the first. No need to make a hard selection of the first "Lava" image. Just use the brush and gently blend it in.

Don't mask the sky layer!!! Delete it's layer mask!


I see you have some transparency issues. Deleting the sky layer's layer mask should solve this. You can add a solid color adjustment layer below the two image layers, but you shouldn't have to once the layer mask is gone.