iCloud and photos -question

[Helenluvsrob]

Can you hold photos on iCloud but not on a device ? I can't seem to work this out

I need to know this aswell. If I delete from my phone will they still be on the cloud lol. I only own iPad/iPhone and you can't log into the cloud from safari

I have a 16 gb iPad and the photos are in cloud and on the iPad as thumbprints? and it has used 1.7 gb of space. The same photos are on my phone but as photos and take up 6.5 gb, but also in the cloud. They look the same though

I did delete an old phone recently and had to sign out of iCloud to do this, I guess this preserved the data and the photos as they are still all there on my other devices

So yes they are on the device and look like photos but they are thumbprints, whatever that is. I don't think they can be only in the cloud with iCloud but these thumbprints take up not much space. Hopefully someone will come along and explain as I don't fully understand it all