Q: Deleting photos from iPhone but not iCloud

Please explain what is more intuitive and elegant than a single library shared among all devices with all devices seeing exactly the same thing - any other choice is less intuitive and certainly much less elegant

and again

You certainly can request this from Apple - https://www.apple.com/feedback/photos.html - but IMHO the chances a zero since that tis exactly the opposite of the purpose of iCloud Photo library and there are many other ways to accomplish it without screwing up lots of people - you can use iTunes sync, MyPhotoStream or direct import with Image Capture and not have any linkage between photos on different devices -

and as to understanding how to use the software you choose to use - that is most certainly your responsibility not anyone elses

LN

I did this and have literally just logged on and found ALL my photos have been removed from my Mac, despite that being their original storage destination.... I'm heartbroken.. I upgraded my iCloud storage to accommodate all my photos but it then proceeded to take up all my phone storage (despite having Optimise phone storage selected) so I deleted them off the phone thinking that they would still be on the Mac?!? APPARENTLY NOT!!! Now I feel like the biggest idiot in the F***ing world.. I'm just distraught....

Yes - you should always learn how to use any new thing you start using - if you do not you will wreak your new car, break your new TV and misuse your new software

you need to restore your backup on the Mac from before you made this error

and read software burbs at least - reading details would be even better

https://www.apple.com/icloud/photos/

Opening paragrash

iCloud Photo Library stores every photo and video you take, and keeps them up to date on all your devices. Any edits you make are automatically updated everywhere. iCloud Photo Sharing makes it easy to share photos and videos with exactly the people you want to see them. Create a shared album and invite friends and family to add their photos and video clips as often as they want.

LN

I am so sorry to hear this. I'm sure you haven't had time to check on this, but it's possible the deleted files can be recovered from your Mac. Call the Apple Store and see where they might have been backed up, either on your Mac or somewhere else. You need a sympathetic ear, and not a "you should have known better" response, which I'm afraid might pop up here. I'm sure you are not the first, nor the last, to be in this position. I originally posted about this very thing because the dialog box said the photos would be removed from my "devices" --not that they would be removed from the Cloud as well. "Edits" are not deletions, in common parlance.  I'm so so sorry. I hope it works out that the photos can be recovered. (P.S. There are other threads on this forum that might be helpful, too. Did you check to see if most of your photos are still in an iPhotos library stashed on your Mac?)

Sweet Misery, be sure to log into your iCloud.com account, where there is a folder for recently deleted photos. I believe deleted photos are retained for 30 days. Please let us know if this helps!

Yes LarryHN... but, it is also VERY intuitive to understand that maybe you would like to see a photo on your phone and NOT SAVE IT... and once you see it and access it form the cloud with your phone (to show it to someone else perhaps) THEN you could REMOVE it from your device and not the entire cloud. But this option just does NOT exist. Saying this, the whole idea of the cloud is to see your pictures in ALL of your devices and not necessarily SAVE THEM every time you want to see them... And oh, that's exactly how INTUITIVELY Apple music works!

But thanks for your comment. I was just hoping apple's intuition was more "open minded"... at least I expected it to be. I've been using apple since 2002.

Still missing Jobs.

Did you ever find a solution?  I'm in a similar situation regarding space and don't want to backup the 60gb to iTunes to transfer to a new iPhone. I'm calling Apple. 

"Helpful" comments such as these from LarryHN give support boards their bad rap. If he threw anyone a bone, apparently it would only be to tell you how stupid we all are.  His arrogance and rudeness are not what anybody looking for help and support from Apple Support Communities needs to encounter.

Let us know what Apple has to say! For now, I'm going to store my photos on an external hard drive and look into Amazon's cloud storage for backup. I'll use Photos as it was apparently intended--as a temporary repository for photos I wish to access from multiple devices until they are deleted from those devices. I hope xSweetMiseryx was able to find her/his deleted photos in the "deleted"  photos folder in the icloud.com account.

Hi,

I scheduled a call with Apple and they were so nice.. Really recommend them if you ever need help.

He was able to see a large amount of data in my iCloud trash and restored that - it took several hours to come back, but I do now have my photos! Not every single one, but the important ones are there, that's the main thing.

I asked him about solutions - it was basically to turn off iCloud Photos. I've turned it off on my phone, so it's gonna back to using Camera Roll and Photostream, which suits me fine. I have now also purchased a Time Machine suitable device for back up.

Thanks for your support Katrina and anyone else with sympathetic comments.

That's great news! Thanks for letting us know!

You know, the commenters here definitely got lost in symantics without really helping the OP.  OP, I agree that while it is elegant, perhaps, for the software to simply synch all changes across all devices, it is not a solution for everyone.  I think this was one of those design decisions Apple makes where they are trying to keep things simple, with as few settings as possible.  In this case, it seems to overlook a common user desire though, and I hope they add an option for it in a future release.

I share your desire for a solution where the photos are stored in the cloud, can be accessed by any device with an authenticated account, but the "synching" is only a one-way upload from the phone.  The solution I am going to choose is to use the Google Photos app can be set to automatically upload your photos.  Once they are uploaded, you can delete them from your phone and you can use the Google photos app (or website on a computer) to browse them, send them, edit them, delete them, tag them, etc. 

Good luck in a finding a solution that works for you.

Cheers!

it is not a solution for everyone.

That is correct - and the solution is as posted many times is that if it is not the solution for you do not use it

Explaining a simple answer is not being lost in semantics - it is explaining exactly how a feature works - it works like it works and you choose to use it or not - you choose not to which is a valid choice - others need to also make their choice

And as further explained many times this is not a place to change things and it is not a place to address apple - to do that I will explain once again since you seem not to understand - http://www.apple.com/feedback/photos.html

LN

I just moved to a new iPhone 6s and chose to set it up on my new phone when I did the photos that took up 9GB of space on my old phone then took up less than 1gb.  My conclusion is that optimise storage does not work if the photos are already stored on your phone e.g. if you take a photo on your iPad and have optimise storage on for your phone you will get the thumbnail on your phone and not the full file, if however you took the photo or video on your phone then there is no way to optimise storage for that file you get the full size version and there is no way to change this without.  I can understand the complications of syncing between different devices but all we need is a thumbnail only option Apple at the device level, surely that cannot be difficult?

Armed with this info I decided to move to using camera upload with Google and Onedrive moving forward but on my new phone to upload to them it first needs to download all the files to your phone e.g. download photo to phone library ansd then upload via camera upload, so my <1gb library on my phone is now back to nearf 10Gb,  Ah!!!!!!!!!!

I think that when the dust has settled my only option will be to disable icloud photo library on my phone

I came on here to find a simple solution to something no one seems to be able to answer.  I DO understand that the iCloud photo library is supposed to stream things across all devices.  This is something that photo stream used to do.  I had all photos...well at least most...available on the cloud through all devices under photo stream.  Once the new updates came in, I thought I was turning on photo stream when I turned on the photo library.  Now my brand new phone has 23.5 GB of photos stored on it, no photo stream labeled and I am unable to delete anything off of my phone without losing it also in the cloud.  I understand what Larry is saying about understanding the tool we are using, BUT it isn't working the way it used to work and that is frustrating.  Especially since I can't find anyone who can explain to me how to fix it so that I am not using up all of my storage for photos when I used to be able to remove them from the device have them available in the cloud and not use up storage everywhere for stuff I don't even need.  I download everything to my Mac and move to another location, so there is no need for them to be on my phone physically.  I am afraid to turn off photo library because I am afraid all of my photos will then be lost.  Is there anyone out there who has tried this successfully?  I was instructed by a Mac specialist to delete them from the camera app which is really the old camera roll and he was wrong.  They were then removed from the cloud too.  Luckily I only deleted 600 of the 1900 photos and they were still in the recently deleted so I recovered them all.  HELP!

Glad you posted! I bet 99% of the 10,000 people who have read this thread have had the same questions, so you are not alone. One of the first things to do is check the option to "optimize iPhone storage." If you have not chosen that option, you may be able to save a lot of space on your phone by doing so. But for me, that was an interim solution until I figured out for sure that deleting photos on my devices would delete them everywhere. Perhaps at some future date, Apple will have an option to leave all our photos safely and securely stored in the Cloud while allowing us to delete them from our devices. I eagerly await that development! Meanwhile, I first stored all my photos on an external hard drive, then deleted them from my iPhone. I now use Photos for TEMPORARY storage and access, and I have decided to use Google Photos for permanent cloud access to my photos. That's my solution.  (P.S. I also got less-than-perfect advice from my local Apple store consultant, so I think perhaps Photos had a lot of folks bewildered!)