Dark photo forced to reveal details

If, like me, you've sometimes taken photos in less than adequate light, you might have ended up with something like this:

Not much good to anyone.

However, the digital camera is actually quite good at capturing detail in the dark bits, it's just that you can't normally see it. But you can force the issue in a photo manipulation program. I use iPhoto as that's what came with my Mac. (I understand there's a program called Photoshop which people use with PC-type computers, but I haven't seen it in action.)

This is what I can see once the above photo has been tweaked:

It won't win any prizes(!) and it's horribly grainy, but I've turned night into day. What might look at first glance like the canal is, in fact, the top of Shadow (on the Ashby Canal earlier this year).