I heartily agree on the problems with manual selections, especially on multiple images! I hope I didn't sound too critical, but I could see what had happened and I know how difficult it can be to avoid this and also some experience of how to correct it when it happens..
The common problem is that most models have a lot of black areas in addition to a good deal of lighter tones and cameras will average this out to produce the mid tones as best it can. This often leaves the balance completely wrong. the 'trick' is to lighten the darkest parts with minimized effect on the lightest parts which might already be TOO light.
'Automatic balance' usually adjusts only brightness and contrast, which can work very effectively for normal photos like portraits, landscapes etc. But with our extreme toned models, the result is very often worse than the original!
How to approach this will vary with software.
My personal experience is, at one extreme with Microsoft's own, free, basic Photo Editor and, at the other, with Adobe Photoshop.
MS Photo Editor is useless for individual selections, but is fast and simple to cover overall adjustments. Really good results can often be obtained simply by raising the overall 'Gamma'
a little. (I emphasis 'a little', as small adjustments have a BIG effect). Definitely worth a try. 'Gamma' covers the mid-tones and can pull up the darker areas without blowing out the lighter areas too much (with a little luck!). Even if highlights do become slightly blown out, Photo Editor can reduce that by adjusting the 'brightness' (light tones) back down to compensate. Note the gamma figure that has the desired effect for you and use that as a target figure for all future pics of similar composition. Gamma/mid-tones is almost guaranteed to be two to four clicks higher than the default used by the program, no matter which programme you use.
This free program is very simple, very fast and well worth using for basic stuff, which is very often all that is needed. If it does what one requires, I truly wouldn't use anything else - and, surprisingly often, it does do the trick.
On the other hand, Photo Shop has a plethora of available adjustments that can be used either overall or on selected areas.
The simplest approach by far is to use its (overall) Image Variations, where you are presented with several (smaller) pics of your original, below a smaller copy of your original pic. The range of copies show what exactly will be the result of clicking on them for 'more red', more blue' etc with immediate results displayed right beside your original. On this same screen you can also lighten or darken the original (without affecting the colour), but the additional and IMPORTANT refinement is that you can select whether this overall adjustment is applied to the shadows (dark areas), mid-tones or highlights and can follow up with several adjustments to any or all of them, while seeing the effect immediately. The resultant pic is always displayed right beside your original, untouched copy which remains exactly as it was, so that you can always make comparisons. If you don't like what you have done, simply click the 'original' and your new result immediately reverts to the starting point again. Your REAL original pic remains untouched throughout your manipulations and will not be affected until you say OK. On hitting OK, all your adjustments are than applied to the original pic, which may take some time to process, depending on your PC.
If you still don't like the result, you can easily revert to the file on your disk drive and start again. Incidentally, Photo Shop allows you to record your adjustments so that exactly the same can then be repeated on multiple pics. But I have never got round to learning this bit - one day maybe!
So, Photo Shop can do much more but it often isn't necessary to go to that length (or expense or steepish learning curve!)
I imagine that all Photo Editors will have similar facilities and you will almost certainly find that what you already use can also do these tricks. Just remember that the contrast is almost always already too extreme so needs reducing if anything and then playing around with mid-tones is usually where the answers lie. Good luck!
