Refresh IPTC metadata

I don't think this is a new support question as I've seen several references to it. I'm just a bit confused as to a solution.

Is there a way to refresh IPTC metadata from the jpg images? For example, I have thousands of images (in hundreds of albums) currently in my Gallery. People now are going back and updating the metadata in the jpog files (using GeoSetter, Xnview, Exifer). I need to get that info (keywords, captions, dates, GPS) back into the Gallery.

I had thought the "refresh dates" maintenance task did this (for the entire Gallery at once) but no luck on that one. The BulkManage extension had some recent edits I found in one of the forums. This seemed like it would do the trick per album basis. Again, no luck, nothing changed in the image info even though the jpg's metadata had changed.

Any ideas what to try? I had read that Gallery 3 had a rewrite in the bulk editing. Unfortunately, even if true, I cannot go to G3 at the moment.

- John

Gallery version (not just "2"): 2.3.1
PHP version (e.g. 5.1.6): 5.2
PHPInfo Link (see FAQ):
Webserver (e.g. Apache 1.3.33): Apache 2.2
Database (e.g. MySql 5.0.32): MySQL 5.0
Activated toolkits (e.g. NetPbm, GD):
Operating system (e.g. Linux): Windows
Browser (e.g. Firefox 2.0):