Handling Digital Photographs: What do I really Need?

I’ve been using Adobe Photoshop Elements to catalog and edit photos. Am I missing out by not taking advantage of the capabilities of Flickr and Picasa? Before I even start to look at their glitzy websites, I need to decide what I don't want to live without.

Hundreds of tagged photos are in my Adobe Photoshop Elements catalog. How will I find the pictures my kids need for school without tags?  Keeping the catalog current and transitioning it from one computer to another has been a less than pleasurable experience. But, I hate to lose all those tags. The ability to either import the tags or convert them to meta-tags would be ideal.

I use my photos in a lot of different ways: high resolution photos for print publications, small jpgs to email to family and friends, something in-between for slide shows on our TV and pdfs to share across platforms. In the past, I ended up with multiple versions of many photos. I’d really like to keep one master photograph at high resolution and be able to easily morph it into whatever form I need.

Online photo backup or storage is a must. I LOVE Dropbox but don’t have enough space to keep all my photographs there. My digital photo catalog is divided between Dropbox and an external hard drive with backups on DVDs.  Yech!

Photo-editing? Does reconstructing a leg, pixel-by-pixel count? Changing from black-and-white or color to sepia? Removing pen and crayon from images? Okay, there is probably not a photo-editing feature in Jasc, that I haven’t used. I really miss Jasc!

So, what’s new to love on Picasa or Flickr? What do you love?  What are you looking for in an online digital cataloging system and/or editing program?  Are there other solutions I should consider?