Sorryu to butt in, haven't read the whole thread. Brian Maffitt has published an extensive personal history of his love affair with AE beginning with v1.0 of CoSA. I do not have a link for you, it might not exist any longer.
I have used AE since it was CoSA and I have often used the unique filters to create still images or to set up animations that produced a particular still image. I do not use Photoshop at all.