Photomerge multiple images to one key image

[ProgIllustrator]

I have dozens of photos of the various stages of a painting I did. I want to overlay them so I can make a time-lapse video of the painting's creation. I think Photomerge would be the best way to align the images together, but I want to align them to one image. In other words, I want to use the photomerge option and make sure that one key image is not altered, but every other image is adjusted and aligned to that one, unaltered image. How would I do this? Or is there a better way to acheive my aim altogether? Thanks for your help!

[Warren Heaton]

It sounds like you want to use Load Files Into Stack with Attempt to Automatically Alight Source Images Enabled.

File > Scripts > Load Files Into Stack....

Photoshop Load Layers dialo box

You can import the resulting layered PSD into After Effects to sequence the layers across time or export the layers to files (probably PNG) to import them into Premiere Pro or After Effects as and Image Sequence.