More proof

Maybe I imagined it. Maybe Photoshop isn't horrible at focus stacking. I ran one more comparison today. Yes, it is horrible.

I stacked 21 images, first in Photoshop then in Zerene Stacker. Then I cropped the resulting images to see how they compared. Look at the center of this Photoshop image for the wide halo around the leaf. Not only is it wide, it has a hard edge.

In the Zerene image, look at the same area and you will see a very narrow halo. This is an extreme crop, only 5% of the original image.

The third image is slightly cropped from the Zerene product and is what I would post on my web site. You can't see the halo. Myth confirmed: Photoshop sucks at focus stacking and there are better alternatives out there.