Can I delete photos off my iPhone To free up capacity but keep the on iCloud and my iPad ?

chrisneska wrote:

So, I think when you say icloud is simply for sharing across devices, you are answering the original question-- I believe you are telling us: if you delete photos on phone, they delete on icloud too. If that's not what you are saying, then my question is: how do I delete all photos from phone and computer, without deleting them from icloud?

Thank you!

Yes - that is what I'm saying. iCloud is not a storage service, it is a sharing service.

chrisneska wrote:

Yes, Amazon Prime is now my extra backup. Still wanted to keep some on icloud. Do not want to keep on phone and computer.

Thank you!

I'm not understanding what your objective is for keeping any photos in iCloud if you are using Amazon Photos?

Can you identify what you are wanting to accomplish by having photos in iCloud?

Cheers,

GB

Hi ,

I have an iPhone 6s and a brand new 2017 macbook pro - both on the latest operating systems. I have an Icloud account with 2 TB of storage.

How do I upload photos from my Iphone to my icloud account and then delete them from my Iphone, but keep on Icloud?

Obviously, I want to do this so I can free up space on my phone, but still keep the pictures forever.

Thanks.

GB. I'd love a quick clarification on this last response from you: you listed several archiving services but did not include iCloud (not iCloud Photo Library) itself. Can I upload there as well? I know I have other docs stored there so I assume I can use that to store .jpgs or .tiffs etc.? Is there an easy way to move an image from the photo library to the more passive iCloud archive?

You can save images to iCloud Drive, but they are not catalogued or kept in any particular order, and moving them can be time consuming. Like anything in iCloud, iCloud Drive is a sharing service, not an archival service, so that means that the photos on iCloud Drive would also be on your Mac. If you delete them from the Mac, they are deleted from iCloud Drive.

So, if your objective is to put the photos somewhere safe where there is only one access point that can modify or change the contents, then iCloud is not going to fill those requirements.

Does that help?

Cheers,

GB

It does help. Thank you! I understand that archiving in iCloud or Dropbox would be a 'dumb' storage location which defeats the purpose of all the great metadata that allows one to sort/organize one's images. I don't want to have to move my photos AT ALL. But here's a perfect example of why Apple needs to overcome some of these issues shared in this thread: I have a new 32GB iPad Pro and already it has 13GB occupied with the Photos from the iCloud Photo Sharing. Its just a shame that the device is almost obsolete before I even add additional apps/data to the device. And I don't even intend to take photos with it, but I really only wish to view images on the iPad.

Since I can only presume Apple monitors this forum, I hope that the confusion and challenges that many customers are having can help shape the next generation of image management. Personally, I'd like a way to segregate images by time. Similar to setting how much of your browser history you wish to keep, it would be helpful for Apple to allow the user to set a parameter where, once images reach a certain age (3 months, 6 months, 1 year, etc.) they go into a "deep" iCloud Photo Management/Storage condition to limit the memory on peripheral devices. I would think that the programming could identify highly mobile devices (iPad and iphone) and keep their storage lean where on laptops or desktops, you could continue to readily see and manage your full history of images. Just my two cents...thrown into the vaccuum of this forum. ;-).

Thanks for your help GB. //jz

Why would Apple, the king of mobile, design a service that literally forces its users to go their competitor for storage?

iCloud /Apple is moronic, utterly arrogant and nothing short of infuriating. Buyer beware, you will not have the ability to both save photos to your iCloud storage and also delete them from your iPhone for space.

As such, I will be canceling my iCloud account and moving to Amazon, DropBox or some other alternative to iCloud's incompetent service.

I agree, thanks for clarifying... I've started using Prime photos-- back up isn't great so far but better than using iCloud and not being able to delete photos from phone. I'm also playing with keeping a copy on an external drive but that seems cumbersome....

kaolynfromboulder wrote:

Why would Apple, the king of mobile, design a service that literally forces its users to go their competitor for storage?

iCloud /Apple is moronic, utterly arrogant and nothing short of infuriating. Buyer beware, you will not have the ability to both save photos to your iCloud storage and also delete them from your iPhone for space.

As such, I will be canceling my iCloud account and moving to Amazon, DropBox or some other alternative to iCloud's incompetent service.

Thank you for your opinion, but you have made it clear that you don't understand. Apple does not consider Storage Cloud Services to be their competitor since iCloud is not designed for that purpose....

GB

This is where Apple under Tim Cook is VERY different from Apple under Steve Jobs. This process is so convoluted and is designed to FORCE the consumer to buy the very expensive iCloud storage (which incurs a monthly bill). Apple under Steve would never have done something so user unfriendly, but be prepared to 1) pay through the nose each month or 2) lose pictures.

This system had such promise, but Cook's greed has made it needlessly difficult/

Short answer- You can't maintain control of your images any longer.

drmiles wrote:

but be prepared to 1) pay through the nose each month or 2) lose pictures.

This system had such promise, but Cook's greed has made it needlessly difficult/

Short answer- You can't maintain control of your images any longer.

Sorry, but malarkey. Of course you can maintain control of your images. No one is forcing you to use iCloud Photo Library. I have never used it. My photos automatically upload to my Mac. I have to import my videos. And if I want to reorganize the photos I have on my device, I simply sync to iTunes to do that.

So, you are incorrect on both points above. You do not have to pay for additional iCloud Storage unless you choose to use iCloud Photo Library. And, you won't lose any photos by not using iCloud Photo Library.

GB

Thanks so much to everyone who has answered... I really appreciate understanding what iCloud does/doesn't do -- and it was never clear to me when I first bought my mac and phone (2 years ago) even though I asked. Disappointing that there isn't a way to store, but at least now we know it.

It's super-helpful to know this, thank you!

Reading the info at the link helps too-- but also is a bit confusing and scary-- because if you do one thing wrong in the process, you could lose all your photos. Think I'll stay with Carbonite/ DropBox for back ups and my external drive as the fail-safe extra storage.

chrisneska wrote:

It's super-helpful to know this, thank you!

Reading the info at the link helps too-- but also is a bit confusing and scary-- because if you do one thing wrong in the process, you could lose all your photos. Think I'll stay with Carbonite/ DropBox for back ups and my external drive as the fail-safe extra storage.

You can't lose all of your photos unless you also delete them from the Recently Deleted folder. You have 30 days to recover photos.

GB

Thanks for the simple answer --

But for Apple - this is complete garbage.

People have no idea what the difference between a photo stream and a camera roll is...

It's the cloud - things upload to the cloud and stay in the cloud. It should work *just like every other cloud service*. Uploading it to a computer should be completely unnecessary.

I'm tired of having to help my friends and family who have lost their photos because of how this works.

So true! It's totally unclear to me what the difference is between "My Photos" and "My Photostream" and the iCloud Photos and on around on it goes! Apple has screwed the porch on Photos and iTunes over the years. VERY CONFUSING and not at all intuitive.