Why if I delete photos from iPad, they also are deleted in iCloud... HELP!

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HELP!

My iPad is only 16gb and running slow. Says I only have 904mb left in memory.
No music, no videos, only 10 pages on ipages.
Nearly 2500 photos from iPhone and MacBook shared.
I started to delete photos off of iPad thinking they would remain in iCloud, but they were gone from iCloud as well. There must be a setting somewhere that allows me to remove all photos off of iPad and allow them to remain in iCloud. After I deleted them and saw that they were also deleted from iCloud, I restored them in iCloud and found they went right back to my iPad. Grrrr. again, my goal is to free up my iPad's photos but keep them in my cloud. Is this possible and how do I make it happen? Thank you to all who are kind enough to respond.
 
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MacInWin

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Nope, that's how iCloud works. It syncs all the machines that are linked to it. So, add a picture to one and it's copied to all. Same for deletion. You can unlink from iCloud on the iPad and that MAY stop the problem, but I don't know how iCloud will handle the photos when the iPad disappears from the sync list.
 
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iMac: 5K 27” (2020), 3.3 GHz, 32Gb RAM. iPad2, iPad mini4, iPhone 13 Mini, Apple Watch SE
Sadly Apples' implementation of the iCloud is seriously flawed. They assume that you will only ever have a finite (read small) number of photos and that you will want them to display on all your devices at all times. They make no allowance for the fact that you might want to keep some photos on one device alone for an unlimited time. Apple assumes you take a photo, show it to all your friends and anyone else you meet then 'pop' you make it disappear into the ether never to be seen again. 400 photos on your phone, 800 on your iPad and 15000 on your mac - nope sorry you must be thinking like a Windows person that's not the 'Apple way'. The best thing to do with iCloud photo streaming is turn it off. Permanently.
 
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You could use your MacBook (with an external back up) as your photo library, getting rid of icloud and syncing from iPad with PhotoStream. If you do this you could then delete the entire camera roll from your ipad to create space.
 
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If I turn off streaming, will it delete photos from iCloud?

If I turn off the streaming from my iPad and delete the photos, will it delete them from iCloud?

Sadly Apples' implementation of the iCloud is seriously flawed. They assume that you will only ever have a finite (read small) number of photos and that you will want them to display on all your devices at all times. They make no allowance for the fact that you might want to keep some photos on one device alone for an unlimited time. Apple assumes you take a photo, show it to all your friends and anyone else you meet then 'pop' you make it disappear into the ether never to be seen again. 400 photos on your phone, 800 on your iPad and 15000 on your mac - nope sorry you must be thinking like a Windows person that's not the 'Apple way'. The best thing to do with iCloud photo streaming is turn it off. Permanently.
 
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As long as all the photos in iCloud are on your Mac, turn off iCloud Photo Library, Photo Stream and iCloud Photo Sharing on your iPad, untick Photos in Sys Prefs>iCloud on your Mac, and then use iTunes to sync only the photos that you want on your iPad.
 
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MacInWin

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Sadly Apples' implementation of the iCloud is seriously flawed. They assume that you will only ever have a finite (read small) number of photos and that you will want them to display on all your devices at all times. They make no allowance for the fact that you might want to keep some photos on one device alone for an unlimited time. Apple assumes you take a photo, show it to all your friends and anyone else you meet then 'pop' you make it disappear into the ether never to be seen again. 400 photos on your phone, 800 on your iPad and 15000 on your mac - nope sorry you must be thinking like a Windows person that's not the 'Apple way'. The best thing to do with iCloud photo streaming is turn it off. Permanently.
I'm not sure I'd considered it "seriously flawed." What it is designed to do is to allow you to take a picture, share it over your devices. What Apple then thinks/plans/expects you to do is to import that picture into Photos and release the shared version to be deleted. You have it in Photos now, can export it if you need it anywhere else. So it's not "'pop' you make it disappear into the ether never to be seen again" but "get rid of the temporary photo you shared everywhere and put it where it is permanently stored, i.e., Photos." May not be everyone's model, but it works as they designed it to work pretty well.
 
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What Apple then thinks/plans/expects you to do is to import that picture into Photos...

That's as maybe but I don't see them making that clear to novice users. iCloud is the one area that seems to cause the most grief to users in my experience. I seem to spend as much time resolving iCloud problems for relatives, friends and neighbours as I did solving Windows problems when I was a Systems Manager in an earlier life. The difference being that I was paid for that :)
 
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MacInWin

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I don't disagree that if that is what Apple expected, they certainly have not made it clear! iCloud is eccentric, to be sure. And because Apple is so non-communicative about how iCloud really works, lots of folks have lots of trouble with it. And the poor souls who lose irreplaceable pictures because of the poor documentation are the worst victims of Apple's sparseness of communication. Personally, I don't use iCloud except to synchronize my calendars and contacts lists. For that, it works well.
 
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Thank you all for the insight into iCloud. I suppose novice users like myself simply assume that the term 'storage' implies permanent. With all of the language the computer world has created, it would have been nice if Apple had created a term which provides a clear distinction between temporary and permanent storage. Then again, no real cloud stays around forever. That should have been our first clue. I have not lost any photos as they are still in my cloud and now stored on an external hard drive which will most likely die with me some day. Perhaps a visit now and then is all I need to enjoy the stored memories. I think I like paper photos more than ever.

Thank you everyone for your helpful answers. Very kind of you to take the time.
 
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I preferred the old way iCloud worked, where you could delete a photo from one device without it being deleted from all other devices. But I've found a workaround. I have Photos on my Mac set up to automatically import any photos I take with my devices. Then I can safely delete them from my devices knowing they'll be safe on my home computer.

Unfortunately, this does not work with video, but I have a workaround for that too. I just created a shared iCloud album called Temp, where I put any videos or miscellaneous pics, then I can delete them from my device yet they are still accessible from anywhere.
 
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Thank you would you mind telling me how you make this happen on your Mac (MacBook?) I'd love to learn how this is done.
 

Rod


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This really boils down to the definition of "Syncing" which is to make all the same. What our OP wants is "Storage" and that is completely different. iCloud offers both. But not via syncing.
Select a photo or video in the iPad and tap share, in the bottom line of the sharing options scroll to the left, you will see "Add to iCloud Drive". This will permanently store the item independant of the online sharing options of My Photo Stream iCloud Photo sharing and the iPhoto Library. You can create a folder in iCloud Drive to put them in (You will need to do this on your laptop). Login to iCloud, open iCloud Drive, create a new folder for photos.
Now you can "share" the contents of your camera roll to a photo folder in iCloud drive and safely delete them from your iPad. This method works for Videos too.
This brings me to something I just noticed last week. Apple is now offering 50Gb of iCloud storage for $0.99/month. Oops, sorry, thats $1.49 Australian.
This is probably big enough for my entire photo library.
 
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