color editing in photoshop

ah, Photoshop.  I know how to do about six different things in photoshop, and I do them over and over again on various different (sometimes not-so-relevant) problems hoping that one of the six will end up working out.  This six-trick pony tried to edit a dark photo on her own, and it wasn't going so well.

Here is the original photo:

There are a lot of darks, and then that one really bright, washed out spot where the light hits the floor makes things even more complicated.

Here was one of my color correction attempts:

I tried to lighten it, but all it really did was make the colors duller and wash out that bright spot on the floor even more.

And finally, here is the photo my friend Charles Roderick, a professor at Harper College, color edited:

He brought me through all the steps and of course a month later I couldn't remember how he did it at all.  Luckily, I emailed him about it a couple months later and he remembered exactly what he did, and even had a video showing the steps!

Here is that video tutorial: http://vimeo.com/5293279.  

It involved going into levels to figure out where the lightest part of your photo is, and then going into curves to actually adjust the colors.  

Hope this helps someone else as much as it helped me!