Agreed, across the board it's the automation features that I miss the most. Macro recording is about all they offer, and while you can do some batch runs I have

Agreed, across the board it's the automation features that I miss the most. Macro recording is about all they offer, and while you can do some batch runs I haven't been able to replicate anything but some pretty simple actions. They seem to be focused on Photoshop plugin compatibility over other features at the moment, which is good for some specialized workflows, but I really want better automation in the whole suite. I'll at least say the lack of automation has finally pushed me to learn more about what I can do with the likes of imagemagick, but the feature-specific use cases like you bring up will be a gap until they fortify those automation features.