I have dutifully been adding keywords to my Nef files in ViewNX, only missing the first two years of my DSLR area. I have no category system or any hierarchy, I just add keywords as I see fit. (I really need something simple to keep up). But admittedly I have not got a good way of searching these (!). For a while I experimented with using Windows Explorer that had some capabilities including searching for IPTC keywords in .Jpgs (but not ratings); somehow that seems to have been lost in Win 7 or I have not got it configured right. I strongly prefer that the keyword information etc. reside with the image file, not in a central database. Any program used for searching should of course be able to index this information (as also Explorer did), but the original information should reside with the file. I have my files simply chronologically ordered, as that is the easiest way to remember them for me.
The keyword and other IPTC managment like star ratings has been very easy up to now, with ViewNX including the IPTC in the NEF. I wonder how things would work for me with sidecars. My ViewNXi and CNX-D testing so far indicates that if previously added in the nef the IPTC information will travel to the sidecar first time it is edited, however after that any edits done to keywords or ratings will not be written back to the NEF. During my initial testing of CNX-D and a number of other programs I did not get the impression that these Xmp files were very compatible between different applications. These issues are particularly critical with ratings, as a lot of work goes into these, and ratings often need to be changed after an image has been edited (and sometimes I also forget to add keyword/copyrights info and have to do it post edit).
I like to hear more about applications used for image search, although the original thread really was about how it is organized.
