Yes, it was easy. Just because AI is "easier" doesn't mean that photoshopping a dog into a picture was ever particularly hard.

"Easily in the pre-AI era" is different from "easier" & "easier" wasn't the claim.

To answer your question, relative ease is a function, in part, of one's skills & resources, so, it's certainly a reasonable claim to make, but will be different person to person.

Background image of some local street. Image of a wolf and object selection tool (pre AI era version). Touch up a little and add some filters to drop the quality.

Sure a little bit more involved than the two second AI prompt, but 3 min job for the lulz photoshoppers.