How to "place into"?

My next quest after yesterday’s quest to use masks with smart objects is to set up some templates. I want to be able to insert photos into a predefined mask with effects so that I do not have to build and position the mask and effect each time I want to set up a layout in a similar format. And as always, I want to keep as much non-destructive editing abilities as possible so that I can resize or reposition either the masking area or the photo inside the mask.

It is easy to do what I want by simply creating a template layout with masks, select the mask area, open a photo, select all, and then by "paste into" the selection. This method works OK but when you resize your image that you pasted into the area to be smaller than the original and save and close your photoshop file, you cannot upscale the image upon reopening without either interpolating or re pasting into. Hence we need to use placed images for retaining the non-destructive properties of these images that I need.

So does CS2 have something akin to "paste into" that would be the same as a "place into" command? I have not found it.

But here is what I have found that appears to work. In my layout, I created three "groups" where I want to place images. Each group has a black box with the opacity set to 100 but the fill set to 0. This layer has a stroke and other effects applied to it. Beneath is box layer is a smart layer which contains a placed image and a layer mask that you can only see when using "edit contents". For each group, I had to use a unique (and this was the key) placed image. I created 3 different colored psd files to use as template place files for my master template. Whenever I use my master template, I need to go to edit contents of the photo layer in each group, and then "replace contents" from the placeholder template to the photo that I want to replace it with.

As I stated earlier, I had to use unique placeholder photo files because if you use the same placeholder for each group, when you "replace contents" of a placed file in one group, all other placed files using the same placeholder also get updated. (Is this a bug or a feature? I guess photoshop saves file space by not duplicating multiple placed files of the same name?)

using the above scheme means that if I wanted to add a 4th group, I have to create it completely from scratch and cannot duplicate any of the previous groups and simply "replace contents". So if I ever wanted to have 6 images, I’d have to create 6 groups and 6 unique template placeholder files. While not horrendous, it would appear that there would be a more efficient way of accomplishing this task. Is there?

My next question is what are the caveats when using the "replace contents" command? Does it matter what the original file size is compared to the replaced file? In other words, if my template files are a lot smaller than my real photos, when I replace then with the real photos, does this compromise the resolution of the real photos in any way? Once aspect that I have already encountered is that "replace contents" can skew the aspect of the new image. And using the transform tool with shift held does NOT get it back to its correct aspect. So this is one significant problem that I have found already.