how to remove photos from iphone once they are on icloud

Any idea how to get rid of them without losing the photos from icloud?

You can't. Any photo you delete from your iPhone will be deleted from iCloud Photo Library as well and from any other device that is signed into iCloud Photo Library. See: iCloud Photo Library FAQ

iCloud Photo Library is meant to be the central storage and to update all changes across all devices. To save space on your iPhone enable "Optimize Storage". This way only smaller, optimized versions of your photos will restored on the iPhone. But do delete only photos you want to delete completely from all devices.

Thank you for clarifying this as it has been driving me nuts. Fortunately deleted photos are saved for 30 days or I would have lost many. I hope that Apple changes this so that iPhoto Library can act independently of the iPhone, seems reasonable since it cost money.

You certainly can request that of them - http://www.apple.com/feedback/photos.html

But I seriously doubt that it will happen since the only purpose of ICPL is to keep multiple devices in sync

LN

You can split your Photos library on your Mac - create one library to keep solely on the Mac, and a smaller library to sync with iCloud and your iPhone.

Thank you Leónie, that is a great idea. But it is still a workaround and I hope that Apple will make changes so that the iCloud Photo Library acts like, well, a library. That is what I thought I was paying for. Now that I understand it is only a temporary repository for photos so that they can be synced across all my devices I may have to go back to the Dropbox solution I had been using. Not as elegant for syncing across devices but much better at being the main library where I keep all my photos safe. And it does not force me to purchase an iPhone with more storage than I need. This is not a nasty comment about Apple, my favorite company and shaper of society during my lifetime, just a comment that I hope may help progress in the fast moving needs of people using cloud storage and instant syncing.

And it does not force me to purchase an iPhone with more storage than I need.

The idea is to use the "Optimize Storage" option on your iPhone. Keep all photos in iCloud and on your iPhone, but let "optimize storage" reduce the size of the photos on your iPhone. You can browse the photos based on the smaller versions, but if you want to share them or edit them you need an internet connection to download them from iCloud.