Rescue backlit and high-contrast footage. Shadows open up and highlights come down while the midtones stay where they were.
Shadows and highlights
Shadows lifts or deepens the dark areas; Highlights brightens or recovers the bright ones. The masks are built from a smoothed copy of each frame, so faces and skies are adjusted as regions without halos along every edge. Midtone Contrast restores punch after the range has been compressed, and Mix blends with the original.
Noise
Lifting shadows makes their noise visible. For dark footage, denoise first with the video denoiser, then lift.