How to separate camera roll from the Photos library

I'm not completely sure what you mean by "camera roll." Apple hasn't used that term in several years. If you mean the Library, then yes, deleting photos from there will delete them from everywhere else. That's because the photos only exist in the Library. Albums are just pointers to photos in the library. They don't hold duplicate copies of the photos.

If you mean something else, please explain.

I'm guessing by "camera roll" you are meaning pictures in Photos that were taken by the iPhone, itself. Unfortunately, there's no way to separate those from the general picture population. If you are synchronizing with Photos on a Mac then you can use a Smart Album there to collect pictures by camera model.

I don't get what "camera roll is not taking up memory" can mean.

Under Media Types we're offered lots of classifications of pictures, but "Camera Roll" isn't one. Lots of people would like that. You can let Apple know here:

Feedback - Photos - Apple

As far as I know, the "camera roll" has always been in Photos. That's where all pictures reside. It used to be, I think I remember, that the little picture icon in the Camera app showed the pictures in Photos that came from the camera.

In the Utilities section there is a Recently Saved view that will show the pictures you just took. That "Recently Saved" view can be included, with "Modify," in the Pinned Collections section,

and that can be positioned up top close to Albums, etc, for quick access.

You can also sort the Library itself to have the most recent pictures show up first.

Tim Murray2 wrote:

Earlier, I would've said "tap the camera roll". I see that "camera roll" was deleted from the 2022 edition of the Apple Style Guide. What is this called now?

I don't know what that's called. What it is is the recent pictures you've taken with the Camera app. It's essentially a link to Photos. But, once again, pictures exist in the Library. Unless you have synced them from your computer (a whole other can of worms), that is the only place in Photos where they exist. Everything else is just a link back to the Library.

If you want to see only photos in the library, that are not yet in any album, you can set the Filter to show only the photos not in any album, but do not delete any photo you want to keep:

See this page in the user guide on how to use the filter on iOS18: Filter and sort the photo library on iPhone - Apple Support (EG)

On iOS26 you will find the filter in the drop down menu at the top of the display, like this - the item with the crossed out stack of pictures: