How could I have been ignorant of Photoshop Actions before? I used Super Fun Happy action (by TotallyRad Actions.com) to produce this ethereal yet contrasty effect on the pic to the left.

Beautiful days are great. But bad for photos (like that to the right, below), when people want their pics taken outdoors in the sun. Direct sun makes harsh shadows under the eyebrow bone, and thus the shadow is particularly obscuring on those with deep set eyes. What to do??
Had I been better prepared, I could've used a spot of flash. But I was whisked away to photograph without much warning, while my external flash lay waiting in my tote bag stashed in the kitchen. I was left to post-processing, ie, Lightroom, to take care of things. There is a function called "Fill light" to do exactly this - fill in shadows with light, but it was not enough. I went in with a area-specific paintbrush with "Brightening" function, and lit up the shadowed areas. It worked!