Aligning in Photoshop

[Hot Opal]

If I bracket say 3 "HANDHELD" shots when I bring them into photoshop how can I correctly align them?
I want to over & under expose & be able to use the best lit areas of each image.

 

[Nomission]

I'm not really sure if I understand your question...
You want to align the shots one over the other? or side by side?
If you seek to get one good picture out of 3, I think that's not the right way.
If I were you, I'll choose the best shot and work on that one. Photoshop has a lot of wonderfull tools to tweak light, colour, exposure, etc of a picture.

 

[Hot Opal]

G'day Nomisson,
Yes I want to align the 3 photos one on top of the other.
My intention is to bracket handheld.
I will be shooting from a boat so a tripod is not an option.
I shoot RAW but to fix areas of under or over exposure I want to be able to align the shots perfectly one on top of the other and mask where necessary.
Is it possible?

 

[Nomission]

If you want to align the SUBJECT of the photos, is very difficult to achieve, it all depends on the position the photos will be taken.
However here goes a possible way.
Open the 3 files and put them in 3 separate layers in one document.(hope you can do this...)
Assuming that the files are the same size, turn snap on, grab a vertical guide and drop it half the way on one of the layers, do the same with a horizontal guide.
Now make sure that the two remaining layers snap to the crossing guides.
At this point you have all the pictures perfectly aligned, the problem is that you will only be able to see the topmost layer. You have to work hard with the opacity (or visiblity) of each layer to ajust the subject's positions without major distortions.
One way to do this is by using the Warp command.
Hope it helped

 

[sbdb]

Photoshop C3/CS4:

edit/auto-align layers , edit/auto-blend layers

 

[Hot Opal]

Thanks Nomission I will give it a try but I like sbdb's auto align option.
Thanks sbdb.