Curves For Previoius Image

this first curve was to downplay the almost white areas - I'm not sure if it was the rock or dirty snow. It's unusual for me not to have a white point on the curve (note the top right of the curve doesn't reach the top of the graph representing white) but for small areas that need to be downplayed, this can be helpful.
S curves simply increase contrast - in this case I wanted to downplay the outsides of the image so I didn't want increased contrast there.
And in downplaying the edges, I wanted to darken them.
I was left with a couple of areas that were way too blue (because of the increase in contrast also increasing saturation - so I toned it down.
This curve lightened some of the important areas of the image.
Note the very small shift in hue - warmed the yellow in the rocks to an orange. Changed the tone of the blue slightly but not enough to be objectionable.
I bumped up the red in the image.

And a final subtle lightening of the lighter tones and increase in contrast.

And remember that after that I flattened the image and applied Akvis Enhancer and then toned it down a little and used the history brush to revert to unenhanced for the outer and darker areas.