Possible poor choice of words on my part. There is technically a file manager, but it's gimped. For instance, plugging in USB storage devices flat out doesn't work. If you plug in a camera or SD card, you can only copy photos to the built in Photos app, and nothing else. Lots and lots of reviews mentioned this.

Apple's official solution for software like Photoshop? There's a Siri shortcut that will import a photo into Photoshop and delete it from the Photos library. This is what I consider a kludgy workaround.

It is absolutely possible to make the iPad Pro functional for these workflows. But iOS is going to fight you where it should be trying to help.