Looking for a better way to tag photos.

I have a question for anyone in the group that might have a large photo library that requires advanced tagging management.

I’ve used Microsoft Digital Image Suite (DIS) Library program in the past to tag my photos. I have nearly 20,000 photos that I've dutifully added Keywords to over the years using DIS. It has a tremendous “label painter” tool that lets you tag many pictures very quickly and easily. Simply open the Label Painter, select the tag (label or keyword), and then click the pictures you want to add that tag to. It lets you quickly select multiple pictures at a time by dragging the “elastic band” over multiple pictures.

Nothing else I’ve seen works as well. Tools like Picasa or iTag simply don’t work as well, as you have to tag one picture at a time, one tag at a time. It’s slow and cumbersome.

I’m asking because I’m having troubles with DIS and I’m looking for a better tagging program.

Here’s the problem with DIS:

It has three categories of Label keywords: People, Events and Places. All my keyword labels are nested under those three. For example, under Places, I have a Keyword named Vancouver, under which, I have a Keywords named "Stanley Park", or Aquarium and so on.

The problem: I installed Windows Live Gallery, and organized the "Descriptive Tags" because they appeared to be randomized.

Then when I opened DIS, I found that my Keyword hierarchy had all been moved out of the People, Events and Places locations, and moved under the "Keywords" location.

Worse yet, a picture that previously had a keywords such as "Stanley Park", or "Aquarium" have the keywords changed to "Places/Vancouver/Stanley Park" and "Places/Vancouver/Aquarium".

It’s now very hard to sort through the hierarchy of tags, and it’s going to take a long time to fix it.

I’m wondering – before I commit to fixing, and then perhaps run into the same problem again, does anyone know of a better photo tagging program that I should look at using instead of DIS?

Or perhaps does anyone know if there a way to fix the messed up hierarchy in DIS? Perhaps the DIS database be edited somehow in Excel or Access?

Thanks!!

Darryl