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

Complicated? Quite the opposite. iCloud is exceeding simple. It is a syncing service. Not an archiving service. Anything turned on in iCloud syncs across all devices that are logged in to the same iCloud account. Contacts. Calendars. Notes. Reminders. News settings. Mail settings. Health data. Keychain. Safari settings and bookmarks. AND Photos. iCloud Photos is 100% consistent with the entire model. I take a picture on my phone. It is almost instantly available on my 2 computers, my iPad, and if I log in to icloud.com. Delete it because I don't like it? It's removed instantly from all of those devices. The same way contacts would be. Or calendar entries. Or Reminders. Or notes, etc.

People expect it to be an archiving service. But don't expect Contacts to be an archiving service. For photos to work differently from every other iCloud function would be inconsistent.

There are more than enough ways to archive photos. Just export them from iCloud Photos on a computer to local storage, and back them up. Use, as you suggest, Google Photos, which is a really great service. Or upthere.com. box.com. dropbox.com. Shutterfly. With 50 ways to archive photos, it's nice to have a different service to just sync photos.

If you delete them from the photo stream album on your phone, if they are still in your photo stream they will also be deleted from the photo stream album on your iPad (assuming it's signed into the same iCloud account as your phone). To keep them on your iPad, save them to the camera roll by opening the photo stream album in the thumbnail view, tapping Edit, tap all the photos you plan to delete from your phone, Then tap Share at the bottom, then tap Save to Camera Roll. They will still be deleted from the photo stream album on your iPad when you delete them from there on your phone, but they will remain in the camera roll on your iPad.

I should also mention that you can import the camera roll photo from your phone to your computer and then delete them (as explained here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4083) and this will not effect your photo stream photos or your iPad.

The purpose of photo stream is not to serve as a permanent backup for your photos, but rather to "mirror" photos taken on one device to other devices that are connected to your iCloud account that also have photo stream enabled. (Take a photo on one device, it appears on all the others. Delete a photo from photo stream on one device, it is deleted on all others.) This allows you to share your photos across devices, but if you want to keep these photos permanently, they should be saved to your camera roll so they can be imported to your computer. In fact, photos in photo stream only remain there for 30 days; after this 30-day period they are removed from photo stream although they will not be removed from the photo stream album on any devices that have already been received them. However, if any of these devices are restored or replace, and photo stream re-enabled, only the photos that fall into this 30-day window will be streamed back to the device (since the older photos are no longer in the photo stream). Unfortunately, this confusion has resulted in a number of users losing photos when they upgrade their phones and are surprised to find that only a fraction of the photo stream photos are still there when the enable photo stream on the new phone.

If you have imported the camera roll photos to your laptop, you can delete them from your phone and this will have no effect on photo stream. The photo stream album on both your phone and your iPad will continue to have the same photos as before. Since the photo stream is not effected by deleting the camera roll photos from your phone, you don't need to save the photo stream photos to the camera roll on your iPad. (That would only have been necessary if you were deleting the photo stream photos from your phone, not the camera roll photos.)

As for you iCloud account storage, you won't see the additional free space in your iCloud account until you perform your next iCloud backup. Your camera roll photos (and videos) are included in the backup so your next backup should reflect this reduction in space. To get additional details on what is taking up your iCloud account space, go to Settings>iCloud>Storage & Backup>Manage Storage. Here you will see the space being taken up by your Backup, Mail, app Documents and Data. If you tap your backup you will also see how much space is being taken up by various items contained in your most recent backup, and have the ability to selectively exclude items from the backup to reduce its size. This article outlines methods for managing your iCloud space: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4847.

I think the easiest way is to delete them when you transfer them from the iphone to the PC. You will be automatically asked weather you want to keep them or not.Second option is You will delete them indivisually.

I did this. I imported my photos in iPhoto and synced my iPhone to iTunes. Even after doing this, when I delete my photos in my Camera Roll, the same photos get deleted in my photo stream. I was able to delete them from my camera roll once imported but I do not know what I did wrong this time. Can someone help me?

I don't know what you did but deleting photos from the camera roll does not delete them from photo stream. Only deleting them from your photo stream album does. If they are in iPhoto, you can add them back to your photo stream by doing the following:

1. Select one or more photos.
2. Do one of the following:

• Click the Share button in the toolbar, click iCloud, and click My Photo Stream.
• Click the Add To button in the toolbar, click iCloud, and click My Photo Stream
• Drag the photos to iCloud in the Source list, and click My Photo Stream.
• Choose Share > iCloud, and click My Photo Stream.

How much space is used by your Other? You may be able to reduce.

With an iOS device, the “Other” space in iTunes is used to store things like documents, settings, caches, and a few other important items. If you sync lots of documents to apps like GoodReader, DropCopy, or anything else that reads external files, your storage use can skyrocket. With iOS 5/6/7, you can see exactly which applications are taking up the most space. Just head to Settings > General > Usage, and tap the button labeled Show All Apps. The storage section will show you the app and how much storage space it is taking up. Tap on the app name to get a description of the additional storage space being used by the app’s documents and data. You can remove the storage-hogging application and all of its data directly from this screen, or manually remove the data by opening the app. Some applications, especially those designed by Apple, will allow you to remove stored data by swiping from left to right on the item to reveal a Delete button.

 Cheers, Tom

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While I understand this explanation, why does Apple have to make this so complicated (ie., camera roll v. photostream differentiation. I made it simple by just moving everything to my Amazon Prime photo storage (unlimited with Prime), where I can call them out anytime I want them from either my iPhone or iPad Mini. And, now I can clean out my phone storage since pictures are safely stored on a totally independent location.

I would also comment that once you invoke iCloud Drive (and I learned the hard way on this one), you CANNOT go back, "photostream" and "camera roll" no longer exist. Then, sorting out deletion from phone without deleting from cloud becomes another matter.

Sadly, Apple, in my estimation, has handled this very poorly and I'd bet I'm not the only person who has not only lost pictures forever, but remains totally confused on "what's what" in this ongoing photo management system.

I agree totally that Apple makes this much harder than it should be. My phone won't take any more pics because it's loaded with those that I have stored on ipad and which I would like to leave on ipad. There are much fewer pics that I wish to carry around with me on my phone, but I can't get rid of them. But even on ipad, if I place pics in albums, they are still kept in camera roll and photo stream, taking up space. This is pointless. Thanks for the tip re Amazon Prime. I am a Prime member and just downloaded the app. However, so far I have been unable to log in -- coincidence?? I wonder.

the best thing is to deactivate icloud photo and to install dropbox. Dropbox saves the photo virtually and does not take phone's space. At the same time, you can see all your photos if connected with web. Deleting photo does not delete those from dropbox.

I agree with your assessment of this photo function on the iPhone.

Why must Apple make this so difficult?

I'm totally perplexed by this issue on having photos on phone and wanting to delete them and yet keep them in the iCloud.

User friendly and convenient, I don't think so, Apple, not at all.

You really missed the boat on this one, big time! 😮 😕 😟

The Prime is a great idea but I don't have prime so I have just done the same thing with Google Drive !! It will do me for a bit until I reach the 15gb and then I will look at it again but this is by far !!!!! the simplest solution. ... also if you put google drive on your phone and allow it access to you photos.... you don't have to do anything it does all the work for you. My kind of app !!! 🙂

Yes, the picture saving/deleting needs simplifying. I want to save certain pics on my phone but have immediate access to the saved ones. So far I haven't had a good solution to accomplishing that.

My question.... if I save to iCloud, then delete on my phone, does it delete on the iCloud, as well??