EDIT
As of March 7th 2012 you can now delete individual photos from Photo Stream if you are running iOS 5.1 or iPhoto 9.2.2
Believe it or not, it seems you can't delete individual photos from iOS5 Photo Stream. It seems you'll need to wait for them to scroll off as Photo Stream just holds your most recent 1000 pics. Deleting a picture from Camera Roll has no effect on the photos on Photo Stream.
According to this page:
iCloud manages your Photo Stream efficiently so you don't run out of storage space on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. If you have Photo Stream enabled on your iOS device, every single photo you take appears in a special Photo Stream album that holds your last 1000 photos. You can't edit or delete photos from your Photo Stream. If you want to touch up a photo or keep a favorite shot permanently, simply save it to your Camera Roll. iCloud stores new photos for 30 days, so you have plenty of time to connect your iOS device to Wi-Fi and make sure you always have your most recent shots handy.
So unless you delete it before it's uploaded to the cloud, you need to follow the procedures below. You need to reset your Photo Stream from iCloud.com or turn off Photo Stream within iOS5 on your device.
Turn off Photo Stream in iOS5:
- Settings > iCloud > Photo Stream
- Switch off and then back on to clear Photo Stream on this device
- Repeat for each iOS5 device
Reset Photo Stream on iCloud.com
- Sign into iCloud.com
- Click on your name in the upper-right corner
- Click on 'Advanced'
- Click 'Reset Photo Stream' to remove all Photo Stream pictures from iCloud
Photostream will store the previous 30 days worth of photos automatically. That means, every photo you take on your iOS devices will be sent to Photostream, but only the last 30 days worth of photos will be available there.
If you enable 'Automatic Import' of Photostream in iPhoto (Preferences > Photostream > Automatic Import) then when you launch iPhoto, it will automatically download a copy of any photos that are in your Photostream, and automatically create an Event titled: {MMM YYYY} Photo Stream (eg. "Jul 2012 Photo Stream")
This Event will be automatically kept up to date, as long as iPhoto is open long enough to sync everything required (depends on your connection).
In effect, as long as you open iPhoto once every 30 days and leave it open long enough for your Photostream to be imported, you should never have to manually import a photo from your iOS device at all.
As for removing items from your Camera Roll on your iOS device, as long as you see that they are present in Photostream (or in iPhoto), then it is safe to delete them from your device. (There is no way around this but to do it manually as far as I know.)
Currently, Photostream does not support videos. To import videos, connect your iOS device to iPhoto and import these manually.
As a side note, in order to keep some photos on the device, you can create a smart album in iPhoto along the lines of "Photos taken within the last 30 days" or "Photos rated 4 stars or more", and configure iTunes to sync these to your device. That way, you can be sure that no matter if you clear your Camera Roll on your device, or delete certain photos, you maintain some convenience.
Best Answer
As per the requirements and criteria of my question's description:
I can answer that NO, Apple does NOT provide a way to two-way sync iPhone device photos. iCloud's two-way syncing between a PC and an iPhone only works for the 'My Photo Stream' folder. What I was looking at on the iPhone, where I was not seeing photos being deleted by PC two-way sync, was the
Photostab in the iOS Photos app - the default view of the Photos app when the user first starts using iOS. This is actually theCamera Rollfolder, and there is no way to do two-way sync with these original iPhone images on the device using iCloud (or any other service).However, to answer the question's (more open) title itself: YES, Apple DOES provide two-way sync between the iPhone and a PC, BUT only for sharing/syncing selected photos from the device (and only for 30 days at that) - NOT for editing, or managing the original set of Photos on your iPhone device. To see the (near simultaneous) two-way sync in action on the iPhone, go to the
Albumstab in the Photo app where in theMy Photo Streamfolder you see as it currently designed. To manage or delete original photos themselves, you will have to manually delete and edit them via non-cloud-syncing methods.