I used Lightroom. Basically I made the lighter areas not so light and made the darker areas not so dark. To do this I used the sliders shown below in the red outlined area on the right.
Pulling down the sliders for Whites (the very brightest areas) and Highlights (the bright but not brightest areas) while simultaneously pulling up the sliders for the Blacks (the very darkest areas) and Shadows (the dark but not darkest areas), and moving all the sliders a long way like I did here, tends to "flatten" the look of the image, and I increased the Contrast slider a bit to try to compensate for that. It is still lower contrast overall than I think many people would prefer, and because of that lower contrast it may lack the stronger visual impact that a higher contrast can produce. However, many people seem to have a higher tolerance than I do for very dark/black areas in their images and very light/white areas. For an image of a dark insect on a light background I think you have to accept such darkness and/or lightness if you want to avoid the flatter look.
I think post processing is very much a matter of personal taste and over time we can each develop our own preferred "look" for our images. Mine happens to be quite restrained in terms contrast, colours and immediate visual impact. Your mileage may very well vary. I don't think there is any "right" way.
Gav-canon aphid, global adjustments and editing history in Lightroom by
gardenersassistant, on Flickr
Notice the history of what I did, shown in the green outlined area on the left. I had five attempts at this, each time producing an adjusted version to compare with the posted version and also compare with previous attempts. For me at least, post processing isn't a matter of knowing what I want to achieve and knowing exactly what combination of sliders to use to achieve it. Making adjustments is a "try it and see how it looks" thing for me. I'm sure some people can visualise what they want and go straight to what they want to get to. I can't. I don't know what I like until I see it. So I wouldn't worry and get put off post processing if it seems pretty hit and miss, especially to start with. As with photographing small subjects, experience can make things fall into place.
Those adjustments were global adjustments, affecting the whole image. I also made a local adjustment. In the area shown in red inside the green oval I turned down the Highlights a bit more and also turned down the Exposure slider, which reduced the lightness in the selected area.
Gav-canon aphid, local adjustment in Lightroom by
gardenersassistant, on Flickr
