Designing databases with Coppermine

I have a site that I am working on and need some advice. I have done little designing of databases, mostly have worked with existing databases instead. I have a MySQL db that will have somewhere around 20,000 records. Each of those records will be linked to a Coppermine photo album with corresponding images. What I'm trying to figure out is if it makes sense to keep the first database separate from the Coppermine images database or should it all be in one database? The Coppermine images can logically be split into two different databases also. I would anticipate 50,000 images in one of the Coppermine databases and up to 20,000 in the second if all of the images are split into two databases.

So.. what my question is.. considering performance and scalability plus how easy/difficult it is to link records between databases... what makes sense on organizing this data? One, two or three databases?

Thanks for any help!