Make Slides more User-Friendly

I'm in the progress of learning this software and hitting a bit of a hurdle when it comes to using slides. It seems that anything I want to do is blocked behind an extra step or two. For example, if I want to put a picture on a slide, I cannot just copy and past an image onto the slide. I instead must add that image to my media library, then on a slide I must click and drag to create a text box, then I double in the text box, then I select the media option and THEN I can select the image I added to the media library. Why all the extra steps?

Or if I want a countdown I cannot simply add a countdown to a slide in my cue, I have to setup whatever background I want the countdown to go on top, then in the top bar select more then countdown (or remember that F6 is the shortcut key), then click start. If I want it to transition to the next slide when the countdown is done I have to manually initiate that.

This is an extremely powerful piece of software and I love what I'm seeing, I'm just confused as to why such a core component feels so limiting.