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.

There's no doubt that Zerene Stacker process requires some effort, but the same is true of the flawed Photoshop procedure. Zerene gives you two options when processing files, PMax and DMap. As the site says, "PMax (pyramid) excels at finding fine detail and handling complex, overlapping structures (hairs, bristles) but can increase noise and alter colors. DMap (depth map) preserves original colors, smoothness, and texture better, but requires user-adjusted contrast settings and is more prone to producing 'halo' artifacts."

I just did a bunch of stacks and PMax is faster and easier. But DMap does better with the color. Compare and contrast, PMax first and DMap second. Both are processed through Photoshop Raw filter and I had to punch up the color in PMax a bit more than DMap. The PMax is still a bit dim, which I could attempt to fix with some more fiddling in Photoshop. Once again, I am not abandoning Photoshop, I am completely dependent on its Raw filter for color and contrast adjustments, even when the source is an 8-bit trailcam JPG. (Also, I didn't stack this one deep enough. I did 24 images and should have done at least 36.)