Removing photos without deleting

Photos is not designed this way. We cannot remove items from the collections, that are automatically created by Photos (from none of the collections in the library), because Photos is filling them according to rules based on all items in the library. The only way to remove an item from Recents or panoramic etc is to modify the photo, so it will no longer match the rules or to delete to from the library.

But we can remove photos from all albums we create ourselves - there we are free to add item or remove them, without changing the library or other albums.

As a work-around create your own album "My Recents" and add all items from Recents to your album. Then use My recents instead. Here you can remove photos.