Re: Deleting Photos from iPhone without Deleting the photo from iCloud Photo Library
The photo management on iPhone is confusing and redundant at times. I just learned that all photos are saved in Camera Roll. I had Photo Stream enabled and this contained duplicate of my photos.
It's strange that even when you create folders, and move photos from the Camera Roll to that new folder, the original stays I'm the Camera Roll and just makes a copy in the new folder. I would like the photo management to be more like BlackBerry. I don't need several copies of the same photo I. My phone.
I finally disabled Photo Stream because I don't have any other iOS devices which I need to sync with. This deleted the Photo Stream photo. So that's a start.
Them I made specific folders and moved photos into them, but I still have the original copy saved in the Camera Roll. I don't want that.
Now I read iOS 8 changed things up again! Argh. I would love a proper file manager similar to BlackBerry. C'mon Apple!
So a couple of clarifications:
First, you're not actually creating folders, you are creating albums. When dealing with iOS Photos, you can't think in terms of old fashined files and folders.
Second, there are no "copies" of your photos. Your photo can appear in multiple albums on your phone, but there's still only one copy of the photo (it only takes up space on your phone once).
The only place on your phone that photos physically exist is the Camera Roll. Any other album that you see the photo in is merely a pointer to the original photo in the camera roll.
The only exception to this is the Photo Stream when you are using multiple iOS devices. which is it's own independant storage and cannot be placed in albums. Photostream is normally just an album like others, but when you have multiple devices there can also be pictures in photo stream (from your other device) that aren't in camera roll. These photos can't be put in albums though.