Photoshop

I got Photoshop Elements for my birthday. That was over 4 months ago. I still don't know how to do even the simplest of adjustments to my photos. Since I had some time to kill tonight, I decided to see if I could "fix" this photo.

I like the composition of the shot, but I hate the way the sky is completely blown out and I don't like the way the mountains look. Everything seems a little washed out to me.

I actually tried to use layers at first. The idea is to layer a better sky over the blown out one. But what I needed was a plain sky picture (with no clouds) to really make that work, and I didn't have any. Every time I tried, using some of my skies with clouds, it made the sky look totally fake and obviously Photoshopped in. So two hours (and much frustration) later, this is the result. Mostly I used the PSE Auto functions to fix the color and then brightened the sky.

I do like it better. I like the colors better and the fact that you can see the mountains in the distance. But was it worth 2 hours?? Or would the time have been better spent standing in this spot and adjusting the settings on my camera until I took a better picture? I'm thinking the latter.