Hi Kevin,
I Use AstroImajeJ for calibration and photometry. Perhaps you might find this guide helpful :
https://britastro.org/2018/a-guide-to-astroimagej-differential-photometry
I don’t use plate solved images for alignment/photometry, I prefer to use apertures (see the “Process” tab and “Align stack using WCS or apertures”). Also I haven’t found it to be good at stacking. It can do it but the stacked file has a FITS header lacking essential data ( eg time !) . This can be dealt with by copying a FITS header from another file. So if I know I’m going to need to stack, I would choose and odd number of images and pick the middle one then copy its FITS header to the stacked image. However the calibration is fairly straightforward I think. Hope this helps !