As promised, an update. I have a prototype image archive site up and running. For uploading, I'm using dropzone.js (
http://www.dropzonejs.com/) and for image display I'm using slider pro (
https://github.com/bqworks/slider-pro).
When an image (or group of images) is uploaded, a snippet is called that does the following:
1. Make both a thumbnail and various screen sized version of the image using imagemagick.
2. Create a unique image id (using exiftool) and store this id in the image as well as using it to rename the image (thus making file names completely agnostic).
3. Extract all the available metadata from the image and store it in the database for ease of searching and display.
To display images, another snippet is used to initially get a random set of images from the database and display both the image and the metadata on the page. A series of search filters can then be used to view specific sets of images.
I'm contemplating whether to build the capability to update metadata via the site. I still believe the best tool for creating the metadata in the first place is Daminion (
http://www.daminion.net/download). The main problem is that it is Windows only.
The only extra I'm using is Login and there will not be any back-end management capability as this is a personal project. But this could be added if needed.
I'm not quite ready to share code yet (still debugging and adding features) but I will do so soon if people are interested.