As most other applications that have some sort of user management, Coppermine comes with tasks that can only be performed by an administrator. It is advisable not to name the admin account just "admin" or "administrator", but to use your real name or nick name that you would like to see appear next to your uploads and comments.
It is mandatory that you memorize your admin account data and/or keep it at some safe place; although you might have set up your browser to memorize the password, you may need it at some later stage.
Wether an account has admin powers or not is being determined by group membership: members of the built-in group "administrators" have admin powers. You can manage your groups on the "groups control panel".
Technically, it is possible to have more than one gallery administrator, but it is recommended to carefully consider giving admin powers to others: only grant admin powers to users you fully trust.
When logged in as admin, you will see an admin menu that displays all additional options and menu entries that you (as admin) have compared to regular (non-admin) users or guests.
Basic as well as advanced settings that have an impact on your entire gallery are being determined on the config screen - some of them are mandatory to set up properly when running Coppermine in the first place, so it's advisable to carefully look into the configuration section.
In Coppermine, files are being organized within a category/album structure. To set categories and albums up and maintain them, use the categories control panel and the Album Manager.
Bulletin Board Code (also known as "BBCODE") can be used to add links, email addresses and some basic formats to text fields like description fields.
Your Coppermine gallery is capable to extract picture meta data and store them in the database. You can manage the meta data in EXIF format using the EXIF manager.
Additional functionaltity that is not needed for all galleries but helpful for many can be added using plugins.
Coppermine can apply watermarking to uploaded images to minimize content theft.