Nik Software tends to be pricey but they have managed with their plug-ins to Photoshop, PaintShop Pro and other editors to speed up the photo editing process.

I use their software filters quite a lot and they do offer considerable control for selectively using a polarizing filter on the sky or controlling the effect of a neutral density filter on sections of an image. Unique filters such as the Sunshine one can even change the apparent lighting of an outdoor shot.
Despite the great number of possible adjustments in Photoshops, great improvements in 3 steps rather than 15 and less experimentation saves time.

Their newest plug-in is called Viveza and covers 7 adjustments: brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, blue, green, warmth, with a difference. Simply click on the area, create a diameter, and sliders appear on the object. Adjust the sliders and the change is made.

No magic wand or tracing to make selections, just click and create the diameter of a circle.

It is particularly good for dealing with difficult and irregular shaped and dark facial shadows or bringing up detail in irregular shadows of scenics. I was also impressed that the hue setting could bring back colour in a totally blue or orange photo shot with the wrong colour balance.

So, if you want to speed up and simplify postprocessing than Viveza is worth a look.

Tegan