Applications :: IPhoto Storage - Original And Edited Version

I've been trying to figure out how iPhoto stores its photos. I've heard that it stores multiple copies of my pictures. I started wondering what was going on when, after importing all my pictures into iPhoto, I started to remove red eye from some pictures. I noticed that after removing the red eye and saving and closing iPhoto, if I opened it back up and looked at the photos that I removed the red eye from... not sure how to describe this, but basically the pictures opened up with 'blurry' eyes and then they focused in and were sharp and had no red eye. It wasn't like after I removed the red eye the picture was saved in that state, but rather the photo was marked as having red eye in an area and every time its opened the red eye is removed.

After some searching, I noticed it keeps a copy of the original and the edited version. However, I don't want to keep the original if I accept the edited. I don't know if it needs the original and it just marks the area of the original to remove the red eye each time it's opened. I'm curious if I was to email the picture if the recipient would see red eye or not. This post says I can delete the originals folder [URL] but if I examine my iphoto library, my originals folder has 1.3gb and the next biggest folder (modified) is 75mb so I think all the photos are stored in the originals and I don't want to delete them. Why does the red eye edit itself out each time rather than saving that way?