In our last lesson, we went over how to open a file, we opened these six JPG files. Now let's learn ways to close a file.

We'll start by closing the active photo, which is this one in front. Method one is to use the File menu. In the Menu Bar, click on File, and choose Close. And my photo disappears from the desktop. Method two is to use the shortcut which is listed to the right of the Close command in the File menu: Ctrl W in Windows, or Command W on a Mac. The letter W doesn't really go with the word close, so it may not be the easiest shortcut to remember. Unless you're Elmer Fudd, and you say, "cwose the file," then you might get a W sound in there, but I close files so often that this shortcut is etched on my brain. And I'm sure it'll be that way pretty soon for you too if you use it. So let's do it.

Press Ctrl W in Windows or Command W on a Mac. The third way to close a photo is to click on the photo's close button here on a Mac, or on the close icon in the upper right corner of Windows. So I'll just click on the close button, and it will close.

Method four closes all the files you have open. In the Menu Bar, choose File, Close All. Notice there's a shortcut for closing all but if you don't use it very often, it may not be worth memorizing. When I choose Close All, my remaining photos disappear from the Photoshop Elements desktop.

Before leaving this topic on closing photos, there's one more thing I want you to know because it took me a while to figure it out when Photoshop Elements first started doing this. I'll open one of our previous photos to demonstrate by clicking on the Open button. My navigational window conveniently opens to the last folder I used. And I'll double click on one of the files to open it in Photoshop Elements. So here's what I want you to know. If you make a change to a photo, an icon will appear in the upper right corner of its thumbnail in the Photo Bin. Let me demonstrate. I'll get the Brush tool and simply scribble on the photo. And now the thumbnail in the Photo Bin has an icon in the upper right corner. If I save this file, the icon will disappear. But if I make another change, it will reappear. So the only purpose of the icon is to remind you that you haven't saved your changes.

I don't really want to scribble on my photo so I'll click on the Undo icon in the taskbar. The scribble disappears. But the icon remains because I've made two changes. Now I've added a scribble and I've removed it. I'm telling you about the thumbnail icon only because I don't want you to be puzzled by it like I was at first. Most of the time, you can just ignore it. But you'll get a reminder that you haven't saved when it's time to close the photo. I will click on the Close icon on the photo. And I get a message asking me if I want to save the changes before closing. In future lessons, we will make changes we want to save. But in this case, I don't want to save any changes. So I'll simply choose don't save.

So that's how to close your photos and documents in Photoshop Elements. And now you also know what that little icon is on your Photo Bin thumbnails.