i think it's fair to say there is no quick solution to make anything to a high standard. ;) for hair generation you could look into getting a head start with fibermesh or perhaps ornatrix and xgen though. it will not save you from managing lots of hairplanes and hand tweaking them though.
one by one placement really take a lot of time so generate for the base of hair with ornatrix,xgen and tweak it my biggest problem are the hair sometimes blocking view, even with xray, its hard to see i try those solution, maybe it will save some time