Q: Can I delete photos from camera roll in iPhone 6 without losing them in Photos in the Cloud?

Hello jc6202,

Thank you for your ongoing participation in the Apple Support Communities! We are so glad that you are here and look forward to your continued involvement! :-)

This is a great question and I’m glad that you asked it. Saving your photos is very important and understanding how your iPhone’s services work with Photos is key to making the right choice for you.

To begin, your iPhone has two main services that can be used with Photos; they are My Photo Stream and iCloud Photo Library. If you see Camera Roll inside of the Photos app, that means you are not using iCloud Photo Library and all of your photos are not saved on the cloud. You still could be using My Photo Stream, however. 

My Photo Stream saves the most recent 1000 photos in that album and makes those photos available for download onto your other devices using My Photo Stream. My Photo Stream does not; however, save any videos that are in your Camera Roll for download on your other devices. 

How many photos can My Photo Stream store?

You can choose to download all of your photos from My Photo Stream to your Mac and PC automatically.

• Photos 1.0 or later: Open Photos and go to Preferences > General. Select Copy items to the Photos library.
• iPhoto or Aperture: Go to Preferences > Photos (or Photo Stream) > My Photo Stream > Automatic Import. All of your photo stream photos will import into your Events, Projects, Photos, Faces, and Places folders in iPhoto or Aperture.

To save storage space, your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch keep your most recent 1000 photos in the My Photo Stream album. From My Photo Stream, you can browse your photos or move the ones you like to another album to keep them on your iOS device forever. And if your Apple TV has limited storage, you'll see only your most recent photos.

Which photo formats can I use with My Photo Stream?

My Photo Stream supports JPEG, TIFF, PNG, and most RAW photo formats. My Photo Stream doesn't work with video.

You mention having over 39GB of photos on your iPhone 6. This sounds like you may have well over 1000 photos. If this is the case, I would suggest turning on iCloud Photo Library from Settings > iCloud > Photos as described in the attached article below. 

iCloud Photo Library FAQ - Apple Support

iCloud Photo Library will copy all of your photos and videos to the cloud and make them available across all of your devices, including your Mac, that are signed into the same iCloud Apple ID and have iCloud Photo Library enabled. 

Using this service will eliminate the need for you to import all of your photos and videos to your Mac. In fact, your Camera Roll will change to All Photos on your iPhone. 

What happened to the Camera Roll album on my iOS device?

When you turn on iCloud Photo Library, The Camera Roll album is replaced with an All Photos album. The All Photos album gives you the same compact scroll view, now with all your photos and videos organized by the date you add them.

Get help with your iCloud Photo Library - Apple Support

In your situation, if you were to delete the pictures from your Camera Roll without having first imported them to your Mac, they would be actually deleted and unable to recover (unless you restored from a backup). 

If you would like to avoid importing all of your photos and videos and then syncing them to your new iPhone or avoid restoring all of those photos from a backup as you mention in your question, iCloud Photo Library may be the way to go. 

I hope this information proves helpful. Please reply and let us know if this information did assist you in making a decision on how to move forward or to provide any further information. As I said earlier, we’re glad that you are a part of the Apple Support Communities and can’t wait to hear more from you!

Have a great day!