how do i safely delete photos from my iPhone without deleting them from my macbook pro? I don't have enough memory to update.

It depends on how you copied the photos to your MacBook Pro.

If you are using iCloud Photo Library on both your phone and your computer (on the phone this is at Settings > iCloud > Photos > iCloud Photo Library and on the Mac it is Apple Menu > System Preferences > iCloud > Photos Options > iCloud Photo Library), then all of your photos would be on both devices and if you delete them from either they will delete from both and from iCloud. You can reduce the storage required on your phone by turning on Optimize iPhone Storage on the same Settings screen on the phone that I described above.

If you transferred the photos to the MacBook Pro using the USB cable and the method described in Import photos and videos from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to your Mac or Windows PC - Apple Support then you can delete the photos on the phone without it deleting photos on the Mac.

If you transferred the photos to the MacBook Pro using Photo Stream, if the photos have been moved from the iCloud section to the Events section of iPhoto (either manually or because it is set to do that in iPhoto Preferences) then you can delete the photo from your phone.

To be safe, test what you are doing by taking a new photo that you don't care about, transfer it using whatever method you used, and delete it and observe what happens.

First, thank you for taking the time to help.

Your third paragraph is where I start. Before PHOTOS, I used iPhoto. The pictures I took on my iPhone or IPad I downloaded via cable connection to my MAC. After downloading my photos I would use the "erase" option to remove all the photos from my device linking to the MAC.

It seems this option has gone away with PHOTOS, as the event option in iPhoto.

How do I erase the photos on my linking device or has that option gone away with PHOTOS?

Thank you for your time and help.

bauschmann49 wrote:

First, thank you for taking the time to help.

Your third paragraph is where I start. Before PHOTOS, I used iPhoto. The pictures I took on my iPhone or IPad I downloaded via cable connection to my MAC. After downloading my photos I would use the "erase" option to remove all the photos from my device linking to the MAC.

It seems this option has gone away with PHOTOS, as the event option in iPhoto.

How do I erase the photos on my linking device or has that option gone away with PHOTOS?

Thank you for your time and help.

Sorry but I am currently using iCloud Photo Library and I haven't transferred anything via USB cable to Photos so I'm not able to help. This is the "iPhoto for iOS" forum. You may get better results by posting a new question in the "Photos for Mac" forum: Photos for Mac

Doing a mass "erase" of all the photos on your iPhone can now be done via an application called Image Capture which is found in your Applications folder.

See this link as a reference: http://lifehacker.com/use-image-capture-to-quickly-clear-out-your-iphones-cam-16 30524834

Thank you soooo much for this tip! Now I'm wondering if there is a way to put a name to each of the photos