Thank you for sharing this and for the comments. I am sure you already have an image of how you want the final product look like but if you are ever out or inspiration you can take a look at Windows Live Photo Gallery and Google Picasa. Picasa is already dead. WLPG will be dead soon. But them both have some neat features. DigiKam is the most feature rich DAM program by far but it might look confusing for some users. Also it probably has too much features which slows it down.
Geeqie has some neat features too.