This Shadow&Highlight script does a decent job of lightening shadows and/or darken highlights in photographs. The UI gives you five control sliders. Two for control of the Shadow and Highlight amount (opacity), two for the tonal width of each contrast mask layer (using gamma), and one for the blur radius of the masks. Plus the option to flatten visible layers when done. read more »
This is a series of Script-Fus that implement various layer effects:
Some effects can have contours (a.k.a. curves) and noise added to them. Effects can either be applied on a separate layer, or be merged into the active layer (which in some cases gives better results).
Tested with GIMP 2.4.2.
Updated 04/21/2008: read more »