If you have in MySQL charset which is not in Coppermine settings, then your visitors see in your photo gallery broken characters. For this problem exists simple FIX, which set correct charset and connection collation for communication with MySQL.
This fix is just add mysql_query(“SET NAMES ‘charset’ COLLATE ‘connection_collation’”); to functions.inc.php to cpg_db_connect function (before last row of function return $result;)