How to delete photos from iMac after importing to iCloud Photos?

So, the location of the file is

in the Desktop folder on your iCloud Drive. You should see iCloud Drive in the sidebar of a Finder window. What happens if you go into iCloud Drive and the folder Desktop you see there, and delete the file there? Control-click on the file and use the pop-up menu to choose Move to Trash. Or is that what you've been doing?

I don't sync my Desktop to iCloud, so I'm not really sure. You can go to "Settings>Apple ID>iCloud>iCloud Drive" and turn off "Desktop & Documents Folders" if you want to stop syncing them. AlWeir suggested this in the first post. I've decided to turn mine on, just to see what happens...

"copy" being checked is good. And do you have “Optimize Storage” checked in Photos’ Settings ?

(Just vocabulary, but "iOS" is the iPhone OS. Sonoma is macOS 14.5)

Your Photos Library can't exist on iCloud, so I'm not sure what you mean. The Photos Library is called

"Photos Library.photoslibrary." Do you see that in your Pictures folder or do you see it in your iCloud Drive. If it's in your iCloud Drive it must be moved back to the Pictures folder.

How did you import the pictures to Photos? Did you use Photos File>Import? Do the pictures look good in Photos? Can you zoom in on them and edit them?

What is the suffix, the extension, on the files? is it jpg, jpeg, pdf, or what?

It's weird that you can't drag the files to the trash. (as you've pointed out!) What exactly happens? Click on the file and start to drag it-- what happens? Do you get an error message?

If you click on the file and use command-i to get the file info, what do you see? Does the path look like this, at the Desktop?

How big is the file?

Also,

• what macOS are you using?
• Do you mean the Photos app rather than the discontinued app called iPhoto?
• In post's title you say you are importing to iCloud Photos. In the text you say iPhoto. What are you actually doing? Are you using iCloud to synchronize Photos on your Mac?  if so, do you have “Optimize Storage” checked in Photos’ Settings
• Where does your Photos Library reside-- in the Pictures folder of your internal drive, or on an external drive? or on a network? on iCloud drive?
• In Photos Settings, is "Copy Items to Photos Library" checked?

The answers to these and IdrisSeabright's questions might help us figure out what's going on.

By the way, have you tried these things?

• Restart the computer (of course)
• Re-start in Safe Mode. This bypasses certain potentially disruptive processes. Safe Mode is different for different computers, so see this: 
•            Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support 
• Make a new user and see if the same problem recurs with it

I usually start with those...

What happens when you try to delete the files from the Desktop? Describe exactly the steps you're using to try to delete the files. You should be able to simply drag them to the trash.

Turn off icloud.(See Screenshot below) Move them off Desktop and back them up to a external SSD or HD. (You can also duplicate them if you still want them on icloud) Create a folder in /Users/yourname/Library/Mobile Documents/com-appie~CloudDocs and call it something other than Desktop or Downloads if you do.

This is off the subject, but I've been thinking about this. I assume you are using your real name, as am I. But you posted a picture of your son (?) with his name. This site is open to everybody, and I'm surprised the moderators here let this get through. The chances that this might be dangerous are incredibly small, but not zero. I would like to suggest that you not do this on public sites. You can use the retouch tool in Photos to smoosh out (pardon the technical term) identifying information. I sometimes include pictures with faces, but if they are more than tiny, I smoosh out their faces. It's probably a good practice. I have been a school teacher, and this was pretty much pounded into us. Anyway-- thought I should say something...