my iphone is running out of space. if i upload my photos to icloud i will free up 18GB. my iphone, ipad and imac alteady have all those same photos. what happens if i up,oad my iphone photos to the cloud? will i have duplicates on all my debices?

Hello Desertbears,

Thank you for using Apple Support Communities! I understand from the information you provided that you want to know if you can use iCloud as storage for your photos; I'd like to help.

iCloud serves as a place to sync your photos to for backup. Syncing your photos to iCloud will not free up the same amount of storage on your other devices. That said, you can enabled Optimize iPhone Storage on your iPhone, and this will save full resolution copies in iCloud and smaller sized photos on your iPhone. Enabling Optimize iPhone Storage may help achieve what you're looking to do:

Manage your photo and video storage - Apple Support

Hope this helps.

Best Regards.

Desertbears,

Thanks for getting back to us. Just to make sure we are on the same page, iCloud is not meant to be a place for bulk storage of photos. The way iCloud is designed to work is sync photos on your device to iCloud, so that iCloud and your devices will all have access to the same photos. using iCloud in any way other than how it was designed to be used may result in data loss.

This article explains more about how iCloud photos is designed to function:

Set up and use iCloud Photos - Apple Support

Best Regards.

backup to iCloud and move the photos to iCloud. I gained 18 GB. Of free space and made my iPhone useable

Not sure what the tech was suggesting, but with iCloud, there is no "move to iCloud" option. If you optimize, which is what the phone was suggesting, the amount of storage space used by your photos on your phone is greatly reduced, but not eliminated.

Your photos are still on your device, but in much smaller sizes.

Also, if using the iCloud Photo Library, your photos are not stored in a backup to iTune or iCloud. They are not in both places.