Blend stacked images - poor results

I would like to do some focus stacking but am not having much luck getting good results using the ‘Blend stacked images’ tool in digiKam.
I have previously been happy with the results from Affinity Photo but unfortunately it is not avaiable for Linux which I mostly use now. I do stacking both for landscape photos with stacks of just 2-3 images and macro with many more.
When I use the digiKam tool (enfuse) it does stack the images but the final image is very fuzzy / blurry. I have tried adjusting some of the available parameters but it does not seem to do much.
I wonder if I am doing something wrong since I don’t see mention here on the forum of the stacking tool not working. Are there perhaps better Linux (Mint) apps for focus stacking I could try?
Thanks.

Perhaps provide some examples? Most notably what parameters to enfuse you changed?

I’ve never used whatever is built in to digiKam, I’ve always done a manual align_image_stack followed by enfuse - and I’ve primarily done exposure fusion and not focus stacking.

I believe that for focus stacking you want to increase the contrast weight. Fuzzy images could possibly be due to camera movement causing a misalignment.

I THINK align_image_stack can detect scale changes too, not sure, focus breathing is something that might cause issues if it can’t.

I have been doing a little more experimenting and though increasing the contrast weight all the way does help I now believe it is mainly a problem with focus breathing as you mention. Probably not much to do about that.