[TriLUG] Linux Photo Management Application?

[T. Bryan]

I'm looking for some recommendations...

Short question
==============

I'm looking at moving from "big directory of photos" to KPhotoAlbum or 
digiKam.  Does anyone have experience with one or both applications that 
they'd like to share?

Right now, I use Gimp when I need to edit photos.  I download photos with 
gphoto2.  I use KDE, and it looks like KPhotoAlbum does everything I need.  
Before I take the plunge with one tool, I was wondering whether digiKam (or 
some other app?) might be a better choice.

Long version
============

So far, I have been storing my digital camera's photos in one big directory.  
I have a few other "album" folders that are just collections of symlinks to 
the primary storage location.  I keep the output of jhead and some other 
manually-entered information about each folder in a separate files on my 
machine.  I browse photos with kuickshow.  

I'm finally collecting enough photos that I'd like to use some sort of photo 
management application.  I'm not fond of applications that take my data and 
store it in some obscure format or in some other way that is inaccessible to 
me.  If I find a cool tool, I often end up using a bunch of its neat 
features, so I'm not opposed to something slick and innovative.  I just have 
a couple of requirements:

1) I don't want the application to be messing with my original photos.  Other 
than adding some info to standard meta-data fields in the photo, I'd like the 
application to leave my files alone.  Ideally, they'd all still sit in one 
directory, and the application would just look for them there.  That would 
make it easier for me to continue to back them up the same way I do now.

2) If the application is abandoned by its developers, I'd like to be able to 
be able to script my way to another tool.  I don't want to lose my original 
images or any of the metadata that I enter just because I switch to another 
tool.  

3) I really just need a tool that helps me organize the photos and browse 
through them.  I'd like to be able to enter metadata about the photos that 
helps me categorize them.  I don't want to create albums and separate my 
photos.  I just want to enter info about the photos and then "query" the 
entire set of photos for the ones that match the query.

Perhaps there are some other cool features that I don't know that I need.  If 
you've got a favorite solution here, I'm open to recommendations.  

Happy Halloween!
---Tom