Changing colour on a digital photo

[Joe Busuttil]

I have a picture (made on my digital camera and downloaded onto the computer) which shows a sea scene with a pea soup colour which I would like to change to a pale blue.

I know how to select the part of the sea scene that I want to change but the picture of a pale blue water that I have,which I could transpose on to the selected area, does not meet my requirements because it is a picture of very still waters whereas the original in my photo is of a ruffled water surface.

I want to change the sea colour but how to retain the texture of the water in the original photo when doing this so that the water does not look like a flat, monotonous slab of blue?

Many thks for helping an oldage civil service pensioner.