Sometimes, it helps to exercise.
Sometimes, that exercise may supply the power to light the bulb int that dim room; the RAW REFINE room.
We ask that you have extra patience for this one as it needs extra attachments as examples.
This is an image for the exercise. Otherwise not worth keeping.

First screen snap 019, is the original... just a piece of mobile artwork against a sky.
The rest of the scene is sort of dark and murky. You could leave it if you wish; for effect, or we can use it for the exercise.

If you wanted to show the buildings across the water with no regard to keeping the odd light and cloud pattern, Click on the building and activate the blue box.
Box appears with three colors and OFF.
This tells Qimage Ultimate: I want the exposure changed to favor the building; the heck with the rest!
See snap 020.  Then you just add or remove FILL light.

Now, we change our mind. Maybe I'd like to retain some of that interesting cloud action.
See snap 021
I selected the grid with the clouds, and when the box opened, this time I selected the Magenta frame.
This tells Qimage Ultimate: Hey. This is the important part and don't lose those clouds if you can help it.

OK we move to snap 022... showing nothing more than moving the FILL slider to the plus side until you get the scene to be decently lighted.
But we lost the definition and detail in the clouds that were there....

Now we need to move to the next post to  complete the challenge.
We need to recover much the clouds.

That is more or less what I do anyway, though not always as successful as your illustrations,  also, Qimage default is so good all that usually it is not necessary to do much 'fiddling'

I will have a fiddle later and see what.

Jeff