How to save space with 'optimized storage' and iCloud Photo Library

[iMore.com]

Images and videos eating up all the storage on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac?

With iCloud Photo Library you never have to worry about running out of space again. Thanks to "optimized storage", Apple can intelligently keep track of and manage your free space, ensuring your recent, favorite, and frequently accessed images and videos are immediately available on your device, while your older, less frequently accessed one are kept safely off your device and up on Apple's servers, just a download away. It's not magic, but if you're tight on space, it'll absolutely feel that way.

Full story from the iMore Blog...

 

[mmjf9696]

I have a question when it comes to the storage used when using optimized storage. I have around 34,000 photos and 400 video on in my iCloud account. I have noticed that my Photos & Camera storage is showing 3.0gb used on my phone. Is this because of the thumbnails that is stored on my phone since the original should be in the cloud? It seems like since I upgraded to iCloud photo my iphone storage has dropped. I have a 16gb iPhone 6 so only about 12gb of usable storage. But with the iCloud photo library turned on my storage just keeps dropping as more photos are uploaded to iCloud from my Mac. I am very low on storage on my iPhone now with very few apps taking up the space. Last I checked I was down to around 788 mb available. With the Optimized Storage will this fluctuate or do you suspect the thumbnails are what is taking up the 3gb and I will need to remove other apps to save space?