Ok been doing some searching this morning.
RAW Shooter Essentials (or Premium) looks like a great tool for editing RAWs, doing batch processing of them etc.
However it doesn't do image management - that is, categorisation etc.
The best tool i've found so far to do this is "
iMatch" - has a BUNCH of great features and has the "virtual" categorisation that I wanted.
I'll give them both a try.. looks like the workflow would be something like;
Option 1:
1. Download RAW files from camera
2. Use iMatch to categorise them
3. Use RawShooterEssential to prioritise and manipulate the RAW images (in batch/or singular)
4. Final touches/text/save as web in Photoshop (if necessary)
Option 2:
1. Download RAW files from camera
2. Use RawShooterEssential to view and prioritise
3. Delete low priority photos (the throwaways)
4. Use RSE to manipulate the RAWs
5. Use iMatch to categorise the ones you keep, add watermarks, etc
6. Final touches/text/save as web in Photoshop (if necessary)
I think i'll go Option 2 to start with and see how that goes.
iMatch is great in that you can have your images stored ANYWHERE (removable harddrives, CDROMs, DVDs, etc), and it's database will know where they are. You can still view reasonable quality versions of them even if the original is offline. And teh categorisation functionality is very powerful, images can be in mulitple categories, you can search in categories, etc.
It can also work on a laptop and desktop and sync between.
Anyway we'll see how it goes.