Congatulations

[HansEverts]

An impressive piece of work. I am a bit afraid though of a very steep learning curve in which the manual plays a central role. Intuition will not be enough. For the time being I wouldn't dare submit a bug report, in fear of having misunderstood the function.

Everything points at Imatch 5 being a powerful machine, but it will take a while before I will feel comfortably on top of it.

But congratulations

[Mario]

...in which the manual plays a central role.

The IMatch help is much better already than anything we had for IMatch 3. Month of work have been put into the help alone.
There is also a Quick Start Guide which you have most likely already read - and printed the keyboard cheat sheet as a hands-on reference.

For the time being I wouldn't dare submit a bug report, in fear of having misunderstood the function.

No harm in that. Other users or I can help you if there is a misunderstanding. If it's a bug, it's properly documented and I can fix it.

Everything points at Imatch 5 being a powerful machine

Definitely. There are too many simple and limited products around already. A typical Picasa user will never see the need for something like IMatch. And users happy with whatever limited management capabilities are offered by their RAW processor or web-based photo gallery won't need IMatch either.

This is not the IMatch user group. IMatch has been designed for demanding users, with large image volumes and/or very specific requirements. For users who want to fit their DAM into their existing workflow and not the other way round. Users who like new ways to look at their file collection, who want to automate things, streamline their workflow. Users who have to deal with metadata generated by multiple applications, maybe over decades, and all the problems which arise from that. A larger share of the IMatch 3 user base, and most likely even more in the IMatch 5 user base, does not even work with images...

I sometimes compare IMatch (in this regard) to Photoshop. When you first use Photoshop you can do almost nothing with it. Only after spending weeks of learning, reading books, taking classes, studying internet tutorials you get a grip on it's power and flexibility. Heck, I have a separate 100 pages book which only explains Photoshop keyboard shortcuts and the like 

Learning Photoshop takes time and effort. Once you master it, you will be well rewarded and you can do things which cannot be done in any other software. Although it's hard to get a grip on Photoshop, it has millions of users out there