Application Architecture Suggestions Please?

Well, I have decided to learn programming, using php/mysql for web applications on linux/apache. My first application I'm attempting is a baseball team(s) player profile database, where the user can select a team from a list that would display a list of players on that team, with a thumbnail image for each record in the list. You could then click a player's name to display his profile which could have up 12 images with captions for each image. A small photo gallery for each player, if you will.

My main question is this. In designing the database should I store the images in the database, or store them in a folder.

If I store them in the database, I would assume I would just create fields for each of the images in the "player_info" table.

If I store them in a folder, it seems I might be better served to create an "images" table to store the image info, and add a "image_ID" field to the "player_info" table.

Any pointers to a good tutorial about image handling and assigning to records would also be helpful, as the php manual tends to speak in "programmers english" rather than "beginners english"

appreciate any info!

Generally speaking saving images in a DB is considered a no-no since it is much slower then saving them to a file with the file location saved in the DB.