how to partly brighten a photo in photoshop?

i found this good tip:

There is a quick solution to bring back under/overexposed photos to life in PS CS. If your subject is underexposed you can select Image/Adjustment/Shadow/Highlight to lighten up only the dark areas of your image. source: http://www.photoshopsupport.com/tutorial...

But if you want to brighten up the photo in particular spots, you can do it with a brush. Here's a description of how to do that, which was what I used:
http://www.picturecorrect.com/photoshopt...
basically you created a new layer, and use a blurred brush with a semitransparent color to paint with.
Hope this will help somebody else as well.