Managing Names of Pictures?

I’m looking for a better way to manage the file names of pictures and images imported into iPhoto. Seems like once imported, it’s too late, and you don’t want to change file names since you’ll mess around with the metadata that iPhoto relies on.

You’d have to change the names of the images before importing to iPhoto (or after exporting from iPhoto, but this defeats my intent). I found this blog post explaining how to import pictures using a workflow with Image Capture and A Better Finder Rename.

Sounds promising for new pictures, but my already-imported pictures are best left the way they are.