Help! iPhone+cloud+photos=confusion!

[beaverbill]

My iPhone is pretty full apparently so am undertaking the challenge of freeing up space.
I've started with photos, have copied lots of them on to my laptop and started deleting but now I'm worried that they'll be deleted from the cloud...will they? And if so, are they gone forever? I just want them off my phone!
I used to be really tech savvy too!!

[SomedayMyPrinceWillCome]

Me too -following for help!

[LemonEmmaP]

I have the same problem! We had one of those Apple Genius appointments and this is what they suggested: you need to create a shared album from within photos on your phone; then you copy up to 1,000 photos to the shared album; you can repeat this until all your photos are in a shared album. Then your photos will be saved to the cloud and you can safely delete them from your phone.

I have to caveat this and say I've never actually done this in practice so please test it on unimportant photos first!