I often use the relight preset in the Tone eq for shadows. Some times I play with it bit often just where it lands is not too bad so I don’t worry about the mask or any thing. The I move the exposure comp to adjust the effect or often as I said its often okay but a bit strong so I just use relight at 50%. Its a pretty quick fix and the results are generally good. I do the same with the tone curve and compress presets in the tone eq. If the image is low key I try one of the tone curve presets in the tone eq and then again just move exposure comp slider if needed and or opacity. If its high key I will use the compress contrast preset and then maybe follow with a second instance of tone eq and now use one of the tone curve presets…I blend this in with local contrast colorbalance dehaze and the contrast eq and those modules are pretty much all I need. I have actually been using the color calibration and not so much the channel mixer but the colorfulness and brightness sliders…you might want to try them…esp brightness…darkening blue bumps the blacks and green is related to luminance so you can play with those…I guess that with some masking and blend modes from time to time and that is about as far as I stray. Now that I think of it I do use color zones quite a lot for small fixes. If I have say a rock face with a cast I don’t like. I don’t mess with WB i just auto range pick from the saturation tab of the CZ module with a shift to create an auto desaturate. It often does a great job as is and often without the need to mask. I do the same with skin sometimes to remove color cast. There are a few technical modules that I use. I don’t have an extensive lens correction but even for my smartphone the vignette correction is amazing using lens corrections. If you have shadows and you don’t use the lens corrections you should try because this could be missing boost to the shadows…anyway that is a few random thoughts…keep plugging…believe me I started exactly like that. I was obsessed and could not figure out why I could not get a better result…over time I embraced what a raw file was and then changed my approach to use the inherent strength that it offered…here’s proof…I had the same question…Attempts to get a raw edit that matches the jpeg.... - #13 by priort
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