Nice OS Focus Stacking tool.

Windows is difficult. Since I have retired, I only do Linux and macOS. I no longer have an employer to require Windows.

Before I retired, I used the free to download vmware player to run Debian Linux in a virtual machine on a Windows desktop. When I could specify the operating system for a project it was RedHat Linux or Ubuntu or Debian Linux.

The free to download vmware player will allow you to run Linux in a virtual machine on your Windows computer. I suggest Debian since it has the most software packages and is well supported. You could use SMB file sharing to share files between the Windows machine and the Debian virtual machine.

Good luck

Yes, in close-ups focus stacking is quite easy. When you go to 1:1 and over everything get harder. And you if increase magnification from natural size it seems difficulties are increasing exponentially until you reach the limit where it's impossible to get any good photo. I once tried 3.5X optical magnification; it was too much, I failed.

My guess is Adobe employs open source programs in their Photomerge commands. "Auto-align-layers" is a lot like align_image_stack in open source world. "Merge layers" does the same job as enfuse and "Blend Layers" adds exposure blending like enblend. Only my guessing, I have no evidence on this. But I've done stacking in PS with those commands and in Linux command line commands with very same kind of results.

Now I found myself too stupid to install a program from Github to Linux Mint. So I trusted in the good old Enfuse with align_image_stack.
Magnification is around 1:5 optically, so an easy case. I think I got acceptable result but I see also some halos. This is made from 12 OOCJpegs, a little crop after merging.

Detail of a shot focused to lens front

Another detail from the same shot

I used helicon and zerene during their 30 day trial period and wound up buying zerene. I thought it seemed a bit sharper on the same stack and zerene works with my linux machine and helicon does not. I tested out the helicon on wife's windows machine and I was pleased with the results but I don't want to keep borrowing my wife's computer when I don't have to. In playing around with zerene I have had decent results when it wasn't pilot error (which is often). Mostly crappy lighting but I'm pretty much in the experimental stage so I don't set up all the time like it was life or death. I use a couple of store bought focus rails which work ok as I don't have focus bracketing built into my camera. I just downloaded focus-stack and somebody tell me if there was any big advantage over the commercial stacking software other than the price tag before I install it. The two commercial ones were both quite acceptable and very fast.

yes just tried that and nothing happens whe double clicking on application

a tip for good focus stacking is to shoot near the axis of the subject not say at 45 deg and move the subject or camera closer my camra to subject is about 10 deg above subject.

a tip for good focus stacking is to shoot near the axis of the subject not say at 45 deg and move the subject or camera closer my camra to subject is about 10 deg above subject.
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I have cut down an old sturdy tripod and attached 2.5 lb weight(my telescope eyepiece counter weight) to the rear leg for stability. My rail is connected to the tripod with a very sturdy ball head. and the rail runs up and down vertically . camera attaches to the rail with an arca plate. I have another very old rail that is mounted on a very flat piece of MDF but the vertical rail seems to work the best for me.I'm just experimenting with all this thanks to alan walls' youtubes. He talked me into the 4x objective . I also use my Laowa 65mm 2x with a Raynox 250 that has been my walk around lens but I've only recently gotten interested with indoor stuff - pretty much experimenting with homemade DIY stuff. some of it worked terribly. some ok. it's all good fun `tho.

Did you run it from a command line interface, and CD to the directory that it is in?

Donald, type "powershell" or "cmd" or "command" into the windows search box.

im not confident enough to run this program ive had enough computer problems over the last 2 months which is why i bought a new one .

Just right click the start button and choose Terminal (Admin). In Windows you need to think sudo which equates to Terminal as Admin.

I don't do a lot of focus stacking but so far I have found Photoshop's focus stacking does a pretty good job.

Out of curiosity I set up this quick and simple "test" to see how many sequence shots I need and the quality of the output.

I set up this test scene with the camera mounted on a tripod and at an angle of ~45deg to the scene. I measured, using a tape measure, the camera's sensor to be ~49cm from the 21cm mark on the ruler. I used a Canon 90D with a Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4.

All shots were taken with

f/11, 1s, ISO 100, 70mm (112mm eq)

With the above data, my phone's DOF app told me the DOF is 2.85cm.

This is a single shot with focus set on the 21cm mark on the ruler.

I then took a sequence of shots starting with focus on the 10cm mark on the ruler and then moving across ~2cm at a time for each subsequent shot. There were 10 shots in total in the sequence with the last shot focussed at the 29cm mark on the ruler.

I did not move the camera or the scene for each sequence shot. I zoomed in to the max using live view and moved the next point of focus to the centre of the camera's lcd display and focussed manually. IS was turned off on the lens.

Below is the Photoshop focus stacked output of the 10 shots.