Google Drive – Does ‘Remove’ Delete File?

This worked for me.

1. Go to https://drive.google.com/drive/shared-with-me
2. Find the folder shared with you
3. Right click the folder
4. Click Remove

If you just want them for Auto Awesome, maybe you don't need to upload them in full resolution. (Since the resolution of most Auto Awesomes is downgraded at creation anyways). Then the photos won't count towards your Google Drive Space at all (free storage).

So go to Google+ settings, and pick the option to upload photos in "standard" size (rather than full size). This way the uploaded photos will be scaled down so that their bigger dimension has 2048 pixels, but they will be stored for free. You won't even need to delete them anymore.

From Storage limit KB:

Items that count toward your storage limit

• Gmail: All the messages and attachments in your mail, including those in your Spam and Trash folders.
• Drive: Files you’ve stored in Drive, like PDFs, images, and videos. Anything you’ve made with Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides won’t count toward your storage limit.
• Google+ Photos: Only photos over 2048x2048 pixels and videos longer than 15 minutes count toward your storage limit.

As I mentioned, some auto-awesome effects will not even be impacted by this reduction of resolution. For instance, the output of Motion auto-awesome (which animates consecutive shots) is always a low-resolution image, even if the original images are uploaded in full resolution.

For others, like Effects auto-awesome (which puts a frame around the image and adds an effect automatically), the difference will be that the final image will also be 2048x2048, because it is made from a 2048x2048 image. A full-resolution uploaded image would result in a higher-resolution output.