Digital Light & Color

In the newly-updated Curves and Histograms PDF, there are great examples of controlling the global and local contrast with the multiple uses of Brightness Curve and Multipass Sharpen, with masks and changing parameters. With not too many steps, this can possibly be done in the combined Adjust transformation.

I have been a fan of Advanced Brightness Curve (possibly also with masks and thus split global curves and, I think, separate low-pass/high-pass radii and blending ratios for different parts of the mask), which could do something similar in one go. I imagine that since the boundaries that separate regions/brightness ranges being differently adjusted in the Advanced Brightness Curve are coherent within it, this may also be easier on the 'continuity' of the image (as opposed to using a sequence of transformations that would likely define those regions differently for each round of the sequence).

Could somebody with experience with both comment on how those two methods compare for them?

Using Brightness Curve followed by Multipass Sharpen is very similar bit not identical to using the Brightness Curve Advanced option. While Advanced Brightness Curve was originally conceived as a way to preserve detail that might otherwise be lost when applying strong curves, you can use it to enhance local contrast as well.

Personally, I prefer to make these kinds of enhancements in stages so I can compare the results after each incremental change as the differences tend to become increasingly subtle as you refine an image. This makes it clearer what each step is doing and makes it easier to see where things started to go wrong if the image starts looking unnatural.