Cannot Change Photo Caption in Lightroom 2.3

Question

I am not able to get Lightroom 2.3 to change the caption of photos taken with a Sony A100.  The caption reads "Sony DSC."  All of my efforts to change this caption to something else have failed, including use of the "Save Metadata to File" command.  While the program initially reflects a change or deletion in the caption at first, when I navigate away from the photo and then return, it always reverts to "Sony DSC."  If someone can suggest a different approach or a workaround it would be much appreciated.  Note that this does not seem to be a problem with Photoshop Elements 6.  I have not yet tried to see if I can make this change in Bridge yet. Thanks.

Answer 1

I have given up trying to find a solution in LR.  It stubbornly overwrites "Sony DSC" on every photo I import and wipes out all changes I try to make in the caption field. I have not found a direct fix in LR, causing me nothing but frustration. But I have found a workaround which sounds complicated but is really quite simple.  The key is to import via the import utility in PS Bridge rather than with the LR import dialogue.  You wipe out the description field which contains "Sony DSC" in Bridge.  Then you synchronize the folder in LR.  Problem solved.  Here are the steps for Windows users.
Step 1:  Create a Custom Template in Bridge.  (a) Go to Tools - Create Metadata Template; (b) In the "Create Metadata Template" dialogue box: (1) under the "IPTC (IIM, legacy)" tab, place a check in the box next to "Description" and leave the field to the right blank (make sure no other boxes are checked); (2) under the "IPTC Core" tab, place a check in the box next to "Description" and leave the field to the right blank; (c) In the "Template Name" field replace "Untitled" with "Clear Sony DSC" (or whatever you want to call your template).
Step 2: Import your photos with the import tool in Bridge (the key is not to import with LR).
Step 3: (a) navigate to the newly imported file of images; (b) in Metadata view click on the top image in the folder and shift click on the last image in the folder to select all; (c) right click on one of the selected images and click on "File info . . .; (d) In the dialogue box that appears, click on the down arrow next to the "Import" button; (e) one of the options should be "Clear Sony DSC" (or whatever you named your template), click on that: (f) an "Import Options" dialogue box will appear, with three choices.  Choose the first of the three "Clear existing properties and replace with template properties."  (Note this will only overwrite "Sony DSC" in the description fields of the metadata and leave those fields blank and will not overwrite any other metadata.); (g) That will return you to the File Information dialogue box. Click the "OK" button at the bottom.  Bridge will now take some time overwriting the description fields in the metadata attached to your images.
Step 4:  Go to LR.  In the Develop module navigate to the folder in which this new folder of images was placed by Bridge.  In the top menu go to Library - Synchronize Folders. Lightroom will now capture this folder of images in your LR catalogue and the attached metadata but thankfully not the troublesome "Sony DSC", so you should be free to edit the caption field in LR.  Do not use "Import Photos from Disk at this seems to recreate the problem and results in duplicate images.
Let me know if this works for you.