Image management

I would like to start using an image management tool to organize my photos. I'm interested in cataloguing RAW photos from a Canon Digital Rebel and a Canon 20d. I would also like to be able to associate processed pictures with theor RAW counterpart. I've been reading about several, namely Thumbsplus, Imatch Portfolio, Iview and ACDsee.

They all seem fairly capable, but in my research it seems Thumbsplus and Imatch have the ability to write metadata database information directly back to the original image file. This seems valuable in that it allows the image file itself to have key data, description information as well as other valuable information. Having it in the image would allow other tools in the future to import that data and make your catalogue capable of easily moving to another tool.

On the other hand, Iview and Portfolio are very powerful tools and appear to be more usable than the others. It would be nice if they had the ability to write metadata back to the image file.

I didn’t really like ACDsee and it seemed unstable when importing many files with the RAW plugin failing often.

So, am I placing too much weight on the ability to write metadata back to the original file? Is there some other way to accomplish this with the other tools? What about associating the RAW with the developed, do any of these tools allow for this?

Any feedback is appreciated!

Thanks,

Bob