What you’re asking is a hell of automation and it can’t be done “just” like that.
I suggest you try to make a combination of Automator and Smart Albums on iPhoto. Things you want to know about iTunes: EXIF is not preserved when Synced to iPhone through iTunes which is part of your requirements.
You could use a Smart Album in iPhoto and Flag the pictures you want to transfer then create another Smart Album with those flagged pictures and only transfer those (or vice versa). Use Keywords to your advantage. Consider a nice app like Keyword Manager for iPhoto to help you with that.
I have no idea why iPhoto makes you nervous, but you should be pointing at iTunes for that…
iPhoto is perfectly suitable for picture maintenance and sorting. You can later use automator to resize them and do fancy things (even tagging!). The same can be said about Aperture.
Your workflow should be, download to iPhoto automatically. Classify, Tag, Delete Bad ones, Adjust, Edit, and transfer to your devices for later viewing (and backup). If you just want to have a backup up of what you do, let Time Machine do it’s work with your iPhoto Library or add another step, use Image Import (or Cameras) to organize, then add to iPhoto for treatment and later transfer to your device(s). The original imported folder will be untouched and, eventually backed up by Time Machine too.
Double tap on the photo to make it full screen. Alternatively, you can see toward the end of the commercial, a simple swipe to the left or the right brings up subsequent photos full screen without the overlay of controls on the top or bottom.
Best Answer
Apple's mandated solution would be to wait for the photos to upload to your Photo Stream or iCloud Photo Library, then start a slideshow in iPhoto or Aperture.
Alternatively, you could make your Mac into an AirPlay receiver using a 3rd party app such as AirSquirrel's Reflector. This one is paid, but I'm not aware of any free equivalent.