GIMP Plugin Registry

FX-Foundry/Photo/Enhancement/Maximize Local Contrast... Like Stretch Contrast, but instead of using the minimum and maximum pixel values from the entire image, uses the minimum and maximum in the vicinity of a pixel to compute its new value. Takes a while to run, but really brings out textures. Result is a Grain Merge layer that adjusts values of the original image.

This filter operates on the visible image, not on a layer or selection.  read more »

A port of gimp-ace to GIMP 2.2, based on gimp-ace 0.6.3.

Reading from the original description there: The basic "Stretch Contrast" operation takes in the whole image at once, and if there is a white pixel anywhere in the image and a black pixel anywhere in the image, it figures the contrast is already as good as can be. But Adaptive Contrast Enhancement works to increase the contrast locally, and brings out details that most wide-sweeping contrast-enhancements pass over.

Runs also on GIMP 2.4, but the GUI is not 100% adopted.