@ MGTF:

the Fill Light slider in Camera Raw can be very useful in clearing up the shadows in 'mild' cases where you have overly dark areas; however it obviously can't help you with bringing back the highlights. For that you have the Recovery slider at your disposal. But if you use a combination of those two sliders to help you out on both ends of the spectrum, there are very nasty 'clipping' or halo effects that appear on the most contrasty edges; the edges where a dark (fill light affected) area directly meets a light (recovery affected) area. Believe me, I tried it many times and the effect on the edges is not very nice to see... and very difficult to correct.

Exactly these unsatisfactory results made me completely avoid the Recovery and Fill Light sliders and made me search for a much cleaner and controllable method.

We do not see things as they are. ǝɹɐ ǝʍ sɐ sƃuıɥʇ ǝǝs ǝʍ