The BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST sliders, the LEVELS tool, and CURVES by themselves often can not duplicate the results of this technique. However, there may be occasions where you need to tweek the contrast with CURVES or the CONTRAST slider after brightening with this technique.
This tutorial was made using Photoshop CS2, but any software that uses Layers and has the Screen Blend Mode can be used. The free software, GIMP has these features.