I'm not sure, actually, but I'm pretty sure Premiere imports the pictures non-destructively also.
Although Afx and Premiere are getting closer in some functionalities I would not use Premiere for the stuff Patrick describes. If you want to animate still images I think Afx would be a far better choice
Have you tried Actions in photoshop? I think that would make your life a whole lot easier.

The Actions-function is surprisingly easy to use too!
Make a new action (press the "new" symbol at the bottom of the Action-palette), give your action a name, do all the stuff you want to do, press stop and voila, Photoshop remembers.
Search it up
M

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