Questions about Photos usage

Albums are used for organizing/displaying photos in ways that make sense to you. Albums do not actually contain copies of photos - they're like web pages - they contain links to the actual photos. The same photo can appear in many albums - without making additional copies of the photo. Again, they're all just links. Among other things, this means that if you edit the image (crop, adjust exposure, etc.), those changes immediately appear wherever that image is viewable (Albums, All Photos, Faces, etc.).

All Photos is a view that shows... wait for it... all photos in your library (no matter what Albums they're in, or even if they're in no albums at all). It's a master catalog that makes it easy for you to locate photos based on date - handy if you misplace one or more of your photos. Like Albums, you can consider All Photos to contain links. The Photos library keeps just one master copy of each image. You cannot move photos out of All Photos - that would defeat the purpose of having it. You don't have to look in All Photos at all, if you don't want to.

What happens when you delete Photos on your Mac or iPhone varies, depending on whether you are using iCloud Photo Library. If you are using iCloud Photo Library then deleting a photo in Mac deletes it from iPhone as well, or vice versa. If you are not using iCloud Photo Library, then erasing from iPhone does not affect Mac, or vice versa. Check iPhone > Settings > iCloud > Photos > iCloud Photo Library and Mac > Photos > Preferences > iCloud to see if iCloud Photo Library is on or off.

 

Ok. Those settings are perfect for the way you want to do things. My Photo Stream will automatically transfer new photos from your iPhone to your Mac. Once they've been transferred to the Mac you can delete them from the iPhone without any issues.