Photos for Newbies ….

I have looked at Alex’s hack for adding a photo album, but I really don’t think I am competent enough with php and mysql to make this work. I wouldn’t even know where to save the files (would they go in the wordpress root folder or a totally separate folder?) etc.
So … I was wondering if it might not be better for me (so I don’t screw up my whole blog page) to just have a link to a photo section created with something like CooperMine (http://coppermine.sourceforge.net/)
Any thoughts or input will be greatly appreciated! Jules