I've had an email from iCloud stating I have 311Mb left (I only have the standard 5Gb). My iPhone 5 is using 3.8Gb of space due to my photos on my phone. If I delete some of the not needed photos will I then free up some space on iCloud? Or if I copy them off my iPhone to my Mac or to Dropbox will it then free up the space on iCloud?
If not, how do I "claim back" the space on iCloud once I delete the photos off my iPhone.
Cheers
If you exclude the camera roll from your backup it will free up space. (Photo stream photos don't count against your storage space so deleting them won't help.)
This article explains how to do this, as well as other options to manage and reduce your storage space: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4847.
IMPORTANT...
Photos should be regularly synced to a computer (like you store photos from a digital camera) using either USB via iTunes (on a mac use iPhoto or Aperture to move them to an album) or using photo stream - and then moved into permanent albums for storage. If using Photo stream, but sure to move the received photos to a permanent album. If you have been doing that, then you can sync those photos back to your device.
If you haven't been saving photos except relying on iCloud to store them in a backup, then that is risky, as many users have discovered. (Doing a restore has lost them their photos - so I would recommend to archive to computer and forget about the backup of camera roll.)
What you could do is import your camera roll photos to your computer and delete them off your phone. Then put them in a folder on your computer and sync them back to your phone using iTunes by selecting the folder on the Photos tab of your iTunes sync settings and syncing. They will then be on your phone in the Photo Library album, which is not backed up in iCloud (because the photos are already backed up on your computer), and therefore they will not take up any of your storage space. And you can continue to include the camera roll in your backup. In other words, this allows you to keep all the photos on your phone without using any of your iCloud storage, have them backed up on your computer and continue to back up new photos in the camera roll to iCloud.
Ok read that thanks. I don't really want to exclude the camera roll though, what I want to do is delete some from camera roll, so I free up some iCloud storage space.
If I delete photos, will it free up space on iCloud?
