why can't I delete photos in my ICloud

Welcome to the Apple community.

You're obviously trying to delete them from the photo itself, navigate to the photo page with all the thumbnails on and tap the small rectangle in the top right corner with the arrow, this will reveal the delete button, you can then select which photos you wish to delete.

I've tried this, and the delete "button" is ghosted and will not delete (plus, I've already experienced the pleasure of iTunes automatically - and unwantedly - deleting over 4,000 photos from my replacement iPad when I first hooked it up to my new MacBook Air).

Deleting was a piece of cake on my previous, non-iCloud iPad 2, but now I am not (yet?) able to do it.

I do NOT want the answer to be that I need to delete them on my MacBook Air and then Sync - I want to view and delete on the iPad (it's my wife's iPad and her photos - and I don't wish to keep the photos on my MacBook Air).

I don't want my Apple products to be adding and deleting photos automatically (or whatever), I want to do these things manually. I'm sorry to say, as a loyal Apple user since 1985, but - man - sometimes I HATE Apple! (The imminent death of the MobileMe Gallery is just another example...)

Anyway, any help on this would be much appreciated.

Just to follow up: I suspect this problem is due to PhotoStream/iCloud, and now what should be a very simple function - and fundamental right! - of deleting individual photos from one's iPad has been removed.

I could care less about syncing and "pushing photos to all my devices" (we ain't using no iPods or iPhones), and I don't want to involve iTunes (which now seems to have become as much about music as MTV is about music videos) - I just want to delete photos from within my iPad, damnit!

HELP!

If the photos were added to your iPad by syncing them with iTunes, then unfortunately you do have to un-sync them from itunes.

When you say that the photos are stored in your iCloud, do you mean photostream, or something else?

When you refer to photos stored on icloud, there are only two places they can be, 1) in a backup (where you can't "see" individual photos), and 2) in Photo Stream. I assume you mean (2). Have you tried reseting photo stream to remove photos in the stream? Log into icloud.com with a browser on a computer (not iOS device) and click on your name (upper right). In the pop up window, click advanced. There you can reset photo stream.

Looks like the unfortunate answer is here:

King_Penguin West Sussex, UK

Only photos taken with the iPad, copied onto it via the camera connection kit, or saved from emails/websites etc can be deleted directly on the iPad - either via the trashcan icon in the top right corner if viewing the photo in full screen, or via the icon of the box with the arrow coming out of it in thumbnail view. Photos that were synced from your computer are deleted by moving/removing/de-selecting them from where they were synced from on your computer and then re-syncing.

Wow, I didn't even notice there had already been two replies to my initial cries for help when I posted King Penguin's info the above.

Thanks, guys (gals?) for responding - looks like I'm screwed.

I find it SO annoying that I can't delete whatever photo(s) I want individually from the iPad itself. Very lame of Apple, methinks.

No problem! I do think its something that will come, maybe soon in iOS6. Its something that bugs a lot of people, myself included.

So I'm out with the family and my iPad is running out of space, my son does something I want to capture on camera -it says not enough space , so Apple mean to tell me I cannot delete old photos which by the way are already on my Mac and saved to clear space? Not very intuitive is it now? Very frustrating.

Same problem with my 4s. but this is actually icloud bug and hope will be fixed soon.

Solution: Make two folder on your computer A & B, Copy all pics to (A) and sync your idevice with (B) through itunes, its will replace all your photos of idevice with (B).

Now remove un-wanted pics from (A) and sync again with folder (A). you will get all ur pics back in ur device exept the pics removed from folder (A).

Please turn off photo stream before the process (from settings, icloud)

Hope its solve the issue (worked on my iphone)