There are plenty of good reasons to use RAW file format instead of jpeg. However certain things get trickier. One of them is keywords.
The great thing with metadata like keywords and IPTC fields is that you quickly can search your entire harddisk for files about a certain subject, taken at a specific location or by a specific photographer. You just have to make sure that the information is stored in your files.
That is fairly easy with JPEG files. You update the metadata with, for example, Bridge, and the files can be searched in Bridge itself, in Aperture or Spotlight.
However, if you update NEF files or other RAW files using Bridge, the data is not stored in the files themselves, but in the associated xmp files. This means that for example Spotlight does not find the image, but just the xmp file. Neither does Aperture see the field, if the file is imported to Aperture.
The only way I found to make sure that they keywords are found by both Bridge, Spotlight and Aperture, is to use Nikon's free application View NX to set the metadata.
This is a funny roundabout way of doing things as View NX itself does not have any search engine. In other words: you need to use one tool to set the metadata, and another to look for it. Well, that is how things work today anyhow.
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