Nope. You pretty much have to do all the things you mentioned already if you want any sort of tinting in combat.
That said, a better (well, more flexible) option to recoloring battlebacks is the use of Yanfly's improved battlebacks plugin to overlay a solid-color, partially-transparent image over an existing battleback. Since the plugin stretches images to fit, the solid color image can be something tiny, like 10x10. The reason I find this approach better is the Improved Battlebacks plugin lets you not only adjust the opacity, but also the hue, so you can use one red image to cover all the other colors, all with varying degrees of opacity, as well as a white image or a black image to cover varying degrees of light (well, misty light) and dark.
Still, this won't tint the enemies and actors (something you said you want) but just like recoloring battlebacks, it doesn't mess up skill animations.