10.10.3 Photos: How to Delete Previously Imported Photos from iPhone?

Question

iPhoto has an option to import only new photos from an iPhone, and then an option to delete all previously imported photos from a connected iPhone after an import session. In this way, I could avoid having duplicate photos in iPhoto, and also remove all photos from my iPhone photo roll, including any that had come into iPhoto via Photo Stream.
This functionality seems to be gone in Photos, which in my opinion is a huge step back.
It seems I am left either to import all photos and then delete duplicates from Photos, or to import only the odd new photos, and still have all the photos that were imported via Photo Stream remain clogging up my Camera Roll, which I like to keep clean.
Has anyone found a way to handle this task like used to be handled in iPhoto?

Answer 1

I believe the architecture behind Photos and the iCloud photo library is that you'll have a unified photo library across all your devices, and that you can manage your library from any device linked to iCloud. So the answer is, you cannot import images to iCloud and then delete them from your camera roll, doing so would delete them from the iCloud photo library.
In the iCloud Settings on your iPhone, you can set up iCloud to optimize storage for your iPhone. That is, you'll have smaller sized images stored on your device to view. If you wish to edit an image, the full-sized image will be downloaded from iCloud. I believe Favorites are stored as full-sized images at all times.
If this isn't the behavior you desire, you'll have to disable iCloud photos and use an alternative cloud storage setup such as Dropbox. I wouldn't link the Camera app to Dropbox, instead I'd use Image Capture to import the images from your phone to the Dropbox photos folder, then delete the images from the iPhone if that's your wish. It may be possible to do something similar with Flickr. They have a Mac app that will automatically upload new images from a source you select. So again you'd use Image Capture to import your photos from you iPhone to a folder you designate on your Mac. Once in the Flickr cloud, they're not linked to anything on your Mac. If you delete them from your Mac, they remain in Flickr.