While Lightroom is great for cataloging images in many ways, I am wondering of some folks here who have been
taking pics for a long time who would need a good way to keep track of their images.

I am referring to, some how making notes when I self publish an image online, where & when under what license (cc).

Many of my pieces are made of several images, eg, a palm tree form here, a boat from there etc... I would like an efficient way to self note where I sourced bits from.

Clearly all the pics are not sequentially numbers, coming form many cameras over the years, (or scanned prints & negs).

I presume a spreadsheet would be the way to go, then I though, where the heck do I start?

Hopefully there is a easy solution out there as I am defiantly not the first one thinking about this.

Any thoughts would be great thanks.

CLB

For you "composite" images, you can save a version as a .psd, after adding a note using the notes tool. This tool is hidden in the eyedropper pull down.

The others would just require prudent metadata tags.

Take your pick; Aperture, Bridge, Lightroom, (i'm sure there are others...) and most will support extensive tagging and metadata, as long as you're consistent and willing to spend hours typing trivial words and descriptions and cataloging your photos.

It's worth it, though, especially if you're a professional (as in, getting paid).