This tutorial outlines an easy way to selectively adjust parts of an image. This method will enable you to increase contrast of portions without clipping the highlights or losing detail in shadows.
First a decision must me made. What part of the image will get what adjustment. In this case the water and platform the bird is on will get a Brightness/Contrast adjustment.
To adjust only the water, it must be selected.
The easiest method to select the water in this case is with Color Range under the Select menu. Use the dropper to pick a spot in the water that best represents the intended selection. Move the slider back and forth until you see the selection you want to use. I will often try a few different selections until I get it just right. And often I will touch up the selection with a manual lasso selection or feather the selection. I used a feather of 4px in this case. Don't worry if the selection is not perfect. You can easily fix this later. Try to get it close and move on.
Once you have the selection you can save it under the selection menu.
When finished add the adjustment layer you want to use. The resulting layer will be masked to your selection, meaning only the selected parts of the image will be affected by the layer.
The concept here is to only adjust the portion of the image that requires adjustment. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Any of the available adjustment layers can be used depending on the desired results.
I moved the slider further than is necessary to illustrate the mask's affect.
Using an adjustment layer will allow you to change the image even after you have done other commands. With an adjustment to the original image you lose the ability to change your mind.
The black area that resembles the inverse of the image to the right is the portion of the image that will not be affected by the adjustment layer. You can highlight this box and paint with white or black to add or remove portions of the image that you want to adjust. Try changing the opacity to 30% and use a soft brush to blend any rough edges from your initial selection.
The colors of the pelican were slightly dull so I made an adjustment to the bird only. To select only the bird, I held CTRL and clicked the layer mask created previously. Using CTRL with a mouse click will select the pixels in that layer. The result will be a selection in the shape of the layer mask. Since the opposite selection is wanted here, CTRL + Shift + I will inverse the selection. The result will be a selection of just the bird and portions of the platform.
Add the adjustment layer again which will result in a mask opposite of the previous one.
The next step is to Sharpen the image. Water (or non-critical portions of you image) does not need to be sharp so don't add artifacts by sharpening it. Select the main subject - I used CTRL with a click to the layer mask created in the previous step to select the pelican again.
Once selected, use Unsharp Mask which will only sharpen the selected portion of the image.
