No. Photoshop is a layer-based image editor. And you want to have a node-based (Nuke for example) workflow features :) Actually it would be the best CG event ever - node based photoshop ;) )
BTW, Photoshop DOES HAVE a bit of such functionality - instanced Smart layers. For example, you have some smart layer, duplicate it. And now you if change the original smart layer - duplicate will change too. But it's not applicable to Masks - they can't be instanced (( So pity...
I don't understand why you want the two masks to be linked together. Can you give a practical example of what you would use this for? I can only assume that you're talking about painting a mask on say the diffuse and specular at the same time? For those sorts of cross-grouping mask links I just copy/paste from one to the…
The reason i am asking is because i am working on at a start up game company as lead artist. I have 3 artists who are straight out of uni and i need to tech them how to work in the hand painted style for textures. This project has deadlines that need to be met and these deadlines are tight and we have no time for lots of…