How to rescue a strong backlight or low contrast portraits photo?

[ManWearPants]

Anyone knows of a good way to rescue these photos? I have tried increasing contrast but that makes the skin tone looks horrible. I have tried increasing the fill light in LR3 but that overexposed the background and also the contrast of the photo looks quite bad. So for those times when such bad photos are taken, what are the software, procedures, action that can be taken to make these photos look at least professionally taken?

 

[Octarine]

There is an adjustment brush in LR3, which will act on selected areas. Try this for those areas you wish to brighten up.
Youtube should have tutorials for this.

 

[tecnica]

post your pic first, we can't read your mind.

 

[Alan Chan]

try masking the areas that do not need treatment. in photoshop.

 

[ZerocoolAstra]

try masking the areas that do not need treatment. in photoshop.

TS using LR3
with LR3 you "brush" the area(s) you wanna adjust, then move the sliders accordingly to get the desired result.