Photos vs. Pictures

No. It is perfectly fine.

Pictures is a folder in Finder for pictures - say I had some I needed for a research project for school.

Photos, let’s you organise, search for, edit, and view your Photos, and synchronises with Photos on other Apple devices via iCloud.

I have never had files in my Pictures folder just randomly turn up in Photos without me asking. My Pictures folder has a lot of random photos / pictures that are no where to be found in my Photos, in my experience, they have been completely separate.

Best of luck with your endeavours!

Always a first time for everything…

I would first drag stuff into Photos. Stuff dragged from Finder can be identified, by using the imported tab on the side. Thus any issues, and you can see what’s been imported, and remove it if necessary. Then, if I’m satisfied that the files are safe in Photos, I would then go ahead and delete from Pictures if I wanted to save storage space…

Yes, if you’d like, you can drag photos / videos from the Pictures folder, or any part of Finder, into the Photos app.

There is no Pictures folder, say on my iPad, as that folder doesn’t sync to iCloud.

Photos synchronises. Has never caused me duplication issues before, to drag files from Finder into my Photos app.