How to brighten dark images in lightroom

[Tarun Kumar Ghosh]

Taken one photo in vizag in front of a ship but as the sun is
behind the face of two persons facing towards me is black. Rest of the image is ok. How can I brighten them.
Need some help. The image is in raw format.

[ashutosh1979]

It would help to see the pic in question  :)

The latest LR has subject selection mask which does a pretty decent job of.... Selecting the subject... That might help in recovering shadow details without touching other  parts

[govindrv]

A few options
1. Use the shadow slider to pull up the underexposed areas but this will pull up all shadow and expose them brightly
2. Use the exposure slider to overall brighten the image and then work on selectively underexposing the bright ares
3. Use the painting tool to select only the people and once you do so, pull up the exposure for the masked areas

Be prepared for noise in the shadow areas you expose
The image needs to be seen to understand the work needed. Also which camera was it shot on? Some of the modern DSLRs and mirrorless ones produce raw files that have a high dynamic range and will not be that bad once you process them

[Artvintage]

Thanks, very interesting

A few options
1. Use the shadow slider to pull up the underexposed areas but this will pull up all shadow and expose them brightly
2. Use the exposure slider to overall brighten the image and then work on selectively underexposing the bright ares
3. Use the painting tool to select only the people and once you do so, pull up the exposure for the masked areas

Be prepared for noise in the shadow areas you expose
The image needs to be seen to understand the work needed. Also which camera was it shot on? Some of the modern DSLRs and mirrorless ones produce raw files that have a high dynamic range and will not be that bad once you process them