Re-link To File: Swap External Image Links w/o Flattening and Re-purposing

Hi Everybody,

Now if there's a way to do this, hoorah, but I really don't think there is and there should be. Photoshop needs to have linking capability similar to InDesign and After Effects where I can create an array of elements/objects and link them to various external images.

Right now, in Photoshop if you Link to File (or Re-link to File) and you have four instances of this link, it will change all of the linked images. This is good, but if I have e.g. 4 different thumbnails (or storyboard frames) I don't want them all to change. The only way to create separation with this linkage is to flatten the image which is destructive and resets the scaling % and anything else similarly, fx etc. that was done to it which makes more work. So I then have to do that all over again or everything has to be embedded for every single instance.

It would be SO NICE to just be able to "pop and swap" externally linked images to make an array without having to flatten and re-purpose each one. 

I've tried a number of things including embed file to reset it, then attempt to link to another external image. Photoshop still then re-connects all the other instances/objects to the original external image and converts/relinks them all.

As far as I can tell, there's no way to do this and if I have an array of 24 externally linked images...that's a lot of work that would be a breeze if I could just swap out the externally linked image with another one using the push of a button and not change the entire set. 

Thanks for reading.