I am currently working in a country where color is often a large part of my intended composition and message. Often the dynamic and color ranges are so great;thanks to bright colors in the lifestyle and bright sunlight that they are beyond the normal processing method's ability to faithfully re-create. So I'm going to give you a fairly typical workflow for correcting all this and the most important part of that workflow involves taking advantage of Lightroom's HSL panel. I'll also throw in a couple of other tips as well. I'm sure you'll find uses for at least some of this in your own workflow.

Here's a shot I took during a lovely day at Tamarindo Beach on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica, just as it appeared out of my Sony A700.

The camera exposed more for the backlit side of the towels and the palm than for the people on the beach. That was fine with me, but then the ocean, sand, and sky were way to much on the pale side, given the kind of day it was and the way I wanted the picture to look. Here's how it looked after I made the changes in the Adjustments and Curves panels, which you can see on the right.

I made a regional adjustment by dragging down on the sand and the Recover and Fill Light sliders brought out the colors in the sky and shadows a bit more, but not quite enough for my taste.

That's where the HSL panel was used to really make the picture show what I saw when I looked through the viewfinder. I adjusted each of the HSL panels to get the final result shown in the version below.