affinity photo First attempt at Focus and Exposure stacking merge

[CybrSlydr]

Here's my first attempt at the focus and exposure bracket merge.

Took four sets of three +/- 2.0Ev bracketed photos on four different focus points on the pistol in RAW. I then merged the exposure stacks into four separate photos, exported those HDR images as TIFFs, and then focus merged those four photos into a single photo as a JPEG. I think it said this single JPEG is over 40MB before I cropped it to this size. Taken with my A7R IVa and Sigma 24-70 f/2.8 (photos taken at f/8) on a tripod.

Appears to be some artifacting/haloing on the rear-edges of the image such as the beaver tail and hammer/slide/rear sight. Otherwise, I'm pretty impressed with the quality.

The tutorial I watched did say that Affinity 2 automatically selects the clone tool and allows you to view the component images and pick which parts look the best and can then use the clone to cover up artifacts, but I was having a very difficult time getting the rear-top edges to blend well.  It was either accept it the way it is, or choose to have the pistol look great with the cutting board looking off, or the cutting board look right, but the pistol part is off.

Does that mean I simply need more images of those possible problem areas to generate more data for a more seamless blend of images?