The way files are managed on iPadOS is terrible for 90% of ‘work’ except web browsing or email. It’s really awkward and slow, and IMO essentially unusable.
And yet photographers are able to use various Adobe (or similar) products to do real-time edits/sharing of their work. Most people don't need 100% control over the file-system. As long as the particular type of file they manipulate is available in the app they want to use, an iPad works pretty well.
If they have a single app/app suite that does everything, then sure that's fine (as long as it isn't things like copying a lot of data off an SD card or whatever) - the OS doesn't get involved much.
That isn't a common use case unless someone is paying a ton of money for a single, specialized piece of software that does everything they want, and the iPad only is used for that one thing. Which is a very limited subset of 'work'.
That's not how the iPadOS treats files. Things are 'owned' by a single App, which makes moving data around or working on a common thing a real PITA except in very specific cases (and even then, it is often heavily controlled).
It's a 'App as a central work unit' type workflow, which is fine as long as you don't use more than a single piece of software/app to work on something.
