very newbie question about beginning

[pasknucklehead]

Okay, I just finished reading my whole book on photoshop elements for dummies and I am still in the dark.. I guess I must be a little denser than I thought.
I know how to get a photo into the organizer, I know how to catorgorize and tag. Now here's the question, okay, say I import a photo from one of my many in my files. It comes on the screen. Now what do I do? I know I can fix red eye, crop, simple things like that and I do, but now do I save it as something somewhere else or where do I go from here? Maybe I'm making it too difficult on myself. I guess when I used picasa, I fixed the photo then I just sent it off to friends, but now I want to do more with my photos but I don't know how to save them and where to save them to. I guess I just need a really really beginner guide as to step by step from beginning to end. Any help out there for someone like me. ? Darlene

[Joe_Kostoss]

If you simply save an edited image, it will overwrite the original. You will then have only the new edited image on your computer and the original will be gone forever with no way to get it back. This is OK when everything is correct, but it is too easy to make a mistake, in which case you are out of luck.

Whenever I edit , I always save the edited image with a different name, even if I just put an "e" after the original name to indicate it is edited. You can save it in the same folder where the original is or in a new folder, that is up to you; I use a different folder where I save my edited files as it is easier for me to find them later. This way I will still have the original if I later decide that I don't like the edits that I made and want to try again.