Shadows and Highlights - Another Look
It can be difficult at times in camera to get exactly the correct exposure, especially around highly reflective surfaces like pools. The concrete, the water, skin tones, other things in the water can be frustrating and easily confuse the cameras sensor if you have it set on any of the auto modes. Traditional exposure rules such as the sunny16 don't always work out the way you expect. It can be even more complicated as clouds move creating shade and brightly lit scenes within minutes.
There a quite a few methods both in Lightroom and Photoshop for dealing with shadows and highlights, both manual and automated but I would like to offer a quick reminder that 'could' create a easy fix.
In Photoshop, choosing the Image..adjustments... and then shadow/highlights will bring forth this dialog box. I keep the 'Show more options' checked at the bottom of the box.
In the Shadows and Highlights section, you have three main sliders:
The advantage of using this menu choice is that if you shoot in a certain style, it can be a tremendous time saver by saving number as default values. Simply open the panel and you have a very good start on the image. On the other hand, this is not in the layers panel so one can not simply un-click it if the results are not favorable. Other choices include levels adjustments and curves, which are found in the layers panel but will likely take quite a bit more tweaking to get what you find as a good end point.
Every image is a little different, so there is not really a one technique fits all, but it is certainly worth giving this feature a try on one one of your next images!