A metadata policy must be defined when trying to give images a value in time, by attaching to the basic "data" an amount of selected information. Creation, preservation and downstream usage should be considered the three main topic to take care of. Automatic input is not enough to personalize photos at the Consumer Level, which is our focus point today. Storage, but mainly preservation during the different operations a consumer set of photos has to endure is a critical problem. Obviously, the main motivation is "how useful it will be" in the coming years and decades, and how can I make sure that it will be re-usable. In the second part of the paper, a proposition of metadata set devoted to consumer level is explained and valued with a number of typical use cases, as an example of consensus on that delicate problem, when addressing a specific type of workflow : consumers. Other types of specific uses, professional and commercial, will be shortly tackled as well.