I agree in the general case but I think there are uses for it that only go slightly beyond the fully automatic version. For example selectively encrypting less

I agree in the general case but I think there are uses for it that only go slightly beyond the fully automatic version. For example selectively encrypting less frequently needed sensitive fields can give you more granular access control and logging, especially if you have to check in with another service to perform the decryption instead of having the key available locally.