How can layer masks be saved seperately to be re-used on other photos?

Question

I was looking at an an album design program that uses Photoshop as its base, and noticed that it pops up a selection of masks in a window below the photo ...something like mini-bridge, and there you can select different styles and masks etc to apply to the image being edited.
I thought that is pretty neat because some of the masks could be quite universal, so I tried creating one and saving it seperately but got nowhere.
I then created one, took a screenshot of it and saved it as a jpg, then opened that, selected all, and tried to paste it into a mask ...and again no go.
So ...how do they do that?
jj

Answer 1

You can copy layer from one document to an other and the layer can contain a layer mask.  You can also save a layer mask as an alpha channel and you can copy a channel from one document to another and use the channel as a layer mask. You need to be careful copying between documents. It woks best when both documents have the same resolutions.
Albums are usually done in Photoshop with the use of PSD templates design for pages in an album with different page layouts however all pages are the same size and resolution.  Image are populated into the templates.  Layer mask and layer styles are often use in the templates.  Photoshop automation may also be used to aid the process.
Photo Collage Toolkit UPDATED Made Rotate for Best Fit an option in PasteImageRoll.jsx Edit to customize your default settings.
Photoshop scripting is powerful and I believe this package demonstrates this.
The package includes four simple rules to follow when making Photo Collage Template PSD files so they will be compatible with my Photoshop scripts.
Size the photo collage templates for the print size you want - width, height and print DPI resolution.
Photo collage templates must have a Photoshop background layer. The contents of this layer can be anything.
Photo collage templates must have alpha channels named "Image 1", "Image 2", ... "Image n".
Photo collage templates layers above the background layers must provide transparent areas to let the images that will be placed below them show through.
There are twelve scripts in this package they provide the following functions:
TestCollageTemplate.jsx - Used to test a Photo Collage Template while you are making it with Photoshop.
CollageTemplateBuilder.jsx - Can build Templates compatible with this toolkit's scripts.
LayerToAlphaChan.jsx - Used to convert a Prototype Image Layer stack into a template document.
InteractivePopulateCollage.jsx - Used to interactively populate Any Photo Collage template. Offers most user control inserting pictures and text.
ReplaceCollageImage.jsx - use to replace a populated collage image Smart Object layer with an other image correctly resized and positioned.
ChangeTextSize.jsx - This script can be used to change Image stamps text size when the size used by the populating did not work well.
PopulateCollageTemplate.jsx - Used to Automatically populate a Photo Collage template and leave the populated copy open in Photoshop.
BatchOneImageCollage.jsx - Used to Automatically Batch Populate Collage templates that only have one image inserted. The Collage or Image may be stamped with text.
BatchMultiImageCollage.jsx - Used to Automatically Batch Populate Any Photo Collage template with images in a source image folder. Easier to use than the interactive script. Saved collages can be tweaked.
BatchPicturePackage.jsx - Used to Automatically Batch Populate Any Photo Collage template with an image in a source image folder
PasteImageRoll.jsx - Paste Images into a document to be print on roll paper.
PCTpreferences.jsx - Edit This File to Customize Collage Populating scripts default setting and add your own Layer styles.
Documentation and Examples