Advice for removing sunlight spots from images such as these?

[TheBladeRoden]

I can smooth out shadows, but um, anti-shadows seem to elude me

 

[ALB68]

Here is my shot at this. Not a one step fix but not too difficult using layer masks. I simply made new layers, selected the color I wanted to apply (shadow), then enter Alt/Option Backspace/Delete and fill the new layer with the foreground color. Apply a layer mask, Alt I to invert it, then just paint in the sunbeam color to cover it. Repeat that on the solid areas. The little girl on the left has the bottom of her dress blown out. I fixed that with a Selective color adjustment layer. Then finally, the girls arms etc are over exposed, so again, use an Exposure adjustment layer, adjust the exposure over the whole image to where it looks right on the hands and arms, then invert the mask and paint it onto the areas needed. You might have to adjust the opacity.
There may be a different way to do this, I am constantly getting shown up with better methods, but this is just one way. Oh, and I also used Image/Adjustment/Shadow & Highlight
to lighten up the image overall.