Today’s Question: I would like to make notes about adjustments I’ve made in Lightroom or Photoshop. Is there a place for this?
Tim’s Quick Answer: In Lightroom you could add these details into one of the existing text fields in metadata, such as the Caption field if you’re not using that for other purposes. In Photoshop, you might want to use the Note tool, which is designed for exactly this type of purpose.
More Detail: In Lightroom there isn’t exactly a “notes” feature, but you can add information about your adjustments to another metadata field you’re not using for another purpose. If you’re not using the Caption field for other purposes, this can be a good choice because the textbox size for this field is a little larger than other metadata fields. Other good options would include the “User Comment” field found in the EXIF metadata, or the “Instructions” field in IPTC metadata (under the Workflow section).
In Photoshop, the Note tool is well suited for your intended purpose. This tool isn’t especially well known, in part because it is somewhat “hidden”. To access the Note tool, you can first right-click on the Eyedropper tool on the toolbox to bring up a popup of additional tools. From that popup choose the Note tool.
After selecting the Note tool, to actually add a note to the current image simply click anywhere within the image. The Notes panel should appear automatically at this point, but it is also accessible by choosing Window > Notes from the menu, or by clicking the Notes Panel button on the Options bar.
Within the Notes panel, simply add the desired text to the note field. Note that you can cycle through multiple notes if you have added more than one to the image, and delete a note, using the buttons at the bottom of the Notes panel.
It is important to note (no pun intended) that in order to save notes added to an image using the Note tool, you must save the image as either a Photoshop PSD document or a TIFF file.