why cant we have a temperature adjustment in the main menu?

Try this:

Using Color balance as a layer effect is easy and you can drag it to all the images you want the same move.

Perhaps I am oversimplifying your objective and if I am wrong, I apologize. I believe the inquiry distills to Gray Balance. (erroneously termed White Balance), from which aesthetic variation, if desired, can be achieved with Color Balance sliders, Curves or other tools. .

Photoshop has the tools to help you. If something that should be neutral gray appears in the image, Curves' middle eye dropper, while not precise. could put you on the right track. So could the Info Panel readout.

There is also the following method. It takes longer to describe than to do:

1. Add a new Layer to the image.
2. Fill it with 50% gray.
3. Change the Blending Mode to: Difference.

The darkest point in the resulting image is the Gray Balance target.

The next step is to locate and mark that point in the image.

1. Create an Adjustment Layer>Threshold
2. The Adjustment Layer may automatically default to a Clipping Layer, as evidenced by the down-arrow appearing in the layer. Unclip it by clicking on the Clipping symbol (double-ring) at the bottom of the Adjustments panel.
3. Shift the slider to the far left then inch it right to find the first tone.
4. Choose the Color Sampler tool. Click on the tone that appeared.
5. Cancel the Adjustment Layer and delete the 50% gray layer. The Color Sampler marker will remain.

The final step adjusts the tonal scale based on Gray Balance.

1. Go to Curves and select the middle eyedropper.
2. Click on the Color Sampler’s mark.

Temperature is a meaningless concept in RGB files, it's all baked into the pixel values. There's no way to distinguish a wall painted bright orange from a sunset.

It only applies to raw files, and even there it's just a ballpark approximation. It's meant to compensate for incoming light, it does not mean there's an inherent temperature in the data as recorded.

You'll notice if you open an RGB file in ACR, there's no temperature scale in Kelvin - just -100 to +100.

Hi there,

You may suggest this as a feature here: Feature Request/Bug Report Form as this forum is monitored by our developers and they might look into it for future updates.

Regards,
Sahil

the photo filter plugin, kinda does it

Do you mean the Photo Filter Adjustment/Adjustment Layer?

so easy...

Feel free to post a Feature Request over at

Photoshop Family Customer Community

but please don’t arrogate to tell people how easy the stuff is you want them to do unless you actually and truthfully can assess the necessary effort.

You can always submit a feature request here:

Feature Request/Bug Report Form