Please advise me on processing and library software (Mac OSX Big Sur)

[billtils]

...
The really big snag with my system is that I cannot easily search by camera, lens or other data embedded in the images. ...

You can do this using keywords and metadata - see here: https://support.captureone.com/hc/en...-21-User-Guide Go to section 14.

[xpatUSA]

You can do this using keywords and metadata - see here: https://support.captureone.com/hc/en...-21-User-Guide Go to section 14.

Interesting link, Bill, thanks.

This may also be of interest. Earlier I had said that Photo Mechanic's search tool sucks. But I have version 6 and now there is a Plus version, apparently with greatly improved searching:

https://www.carlseibert.com/photo-mechanic-plus-released/

This caught my eye:

On the other hand, maybe you use one of those all-in-one programs because you like the way it develops RAWs and then something better comes along every couple of years. Having our archive joined at the hip to our RAW developer is less than ideal.

My earlier point exactly ...

Now we have a product that decouples archiving from editing.

Photo Mechanic itself is something of a staple. Many of us have used it for over twenty years. While we should always keep our photos portable and we should acknowledge that one day we will move our archive, I like the notion of being free to use whatever I want for RAW development and only worrying about re-doing my archive once every couple decades.

I'm off to see if I want to upgrade to Plus or to stick with XnView for searching ...

https://home.camerabits.com/tour-photo-mechanic-plus/

Quite tempting ... but it would cost me a buck or two for the upgrade ... $90 and much, much more if I didn't have the app already.

[xpatUSA]

A quick caveat. I tried adding meta-data to a raw file with Photo Mechanic. Although it seemed to work - the raw file escaped unscathed and an XMP side-car appeared in the same folder ... I don't care for separate files myself. :-|