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OriginalFox
Participant
April 1, 2026
Question

Lost Saved Color Swatches in Recent Update (Photoshop 2026)

  • April 1, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 96 views

My Adobe Creative Cloud Application on my Macbook 2023 just had me update my Photoshop application this morning (04/01/2026) at around 10 am-ish. It was taking too long and I had work to do, so I canceled the update. When I went to open my Photoshop, I got an error that it couldn’t open because it wasn’t finished or it had been damaged. I tried restarting my computer and I got the same problem when I clicked directly on my Photoshop app. When going into the Creative Cloud application, the Photoshop app wasn’t even installed. After reinstalling it and finally getting it to open, my Workspace was completely changed up and my saved swatches were gone. I followed the directions of others who had gone through the same problem, but my swatches are nowhere to be found.

I use these swatches for work so their really important and I really need to get them back. The reason I do have their code saved anywhere was because I had them saved in my Photoshop workspace. I didn’t have a reason to believe I’d lose them after an update as I’ve had updates since getting them and I’ve never had this problem before. 

Please, if there’s anyway I can get all my information back and have my workspace returned as I had it, that would be appreciated.

Thanks.

    1 reply

    Legend
    April 2, 2026

    Bummer, OF. I’m gonna agree with you that the aborted install was central to the missing swatches. Many applications save data then restore or delete it, depending on your answer to prompts. I’m guessing swatches and Preferences were saved off tot temporary spaces. The next install cleaned the slate. The only recovery may be restoring from backup.

    Larry
    OriginalFox
    Participant
    April 2, 2026

    Yeah, unfortunately it seems like it even deleted any way to backup my saved preferences in anything as I’ve tried all the ways the internet has told me to get my stuff back 😔. I ended up just doing my best to recreate everything I’ve lost and even make an entirely different workspace and hope this doesn’t happen again.

    Legend
    April 2, 2026

    Do your part to ensure it doesn’t happen again and that you can recover from bloopers like this -- get religious about backing up everything (Lr backups are for catalogs only) and don’t start an update unless your system has a solid power supply (on power supply) and you are committed. Not judging, as I have had more than my share of horror stories with messing up my computers myself.

    Larry