How do we remove files from iCloud WITHOUT deleting them from our various devices?

Braverzero wrote:

Maybe I'm not understanding the rationale, but if I take ANY photo, any screenshot, it's uploaded to iCloud wasting my costly storage;

This should only happen, if you have iCloud Photos or Photo Stream turned on in Settings ➜ Photos on your device.

When I try to remove it from iCloud, so it is not taking up space, it deletes it from my device(s). I want it on the device. I only need it on one device, I do not need it taking up cloud storage. How can we do this? WITHOUT having to completely duplicate the contents of the data? The assumption and situation here is that I do NOT have enough spare storage to copy the data into a new directory on the same drive. I feel like it should be simple.

Turn off iCloud Photos on all devices you do not wish to be syncing photos to iCloud. Then you can log in to https://icloud.com and delete the photos from there without affecting the photos on your devices.

You don't need to turn off iCloud entirely. Just iCloud Photos and / or Photo Stream specifically.

Turn off iCloud. iCloud syncs your information to the cloud. Settings > Apple ID