How do you stop syncing across devices but still enable iCloud?

I don't want my iPhone photos syncing with my iPad photos and vice versa but I would still like both synced to iCloud. I noticed the only way is to achieve this is if my iCloud is full. That's my main concern, but I would also like to know if that can be applied to the notes app or other miscellaneous apps without toggling them off in iCloud on each device. And now that I think about it, can a solution be applied to my Mac using the same iCloud/Apple ID as well?