Resetting the swatches panel

[Michael J. Hoffman]

I decided to do a little housekeeping witn my workspace today, and started messing around with the Swatches panel. First nuisance that I saw, was the top (non-folder) section of the panel had >100 shades of some off white color that I have no idea where they came from. Names like "OC-1 Natural Wicker," "OC 3 Lambskin," etc.

How did they get there? Looks like I have to shift click on every one to remove them? And, how did all those swatches get into the area above the folders, without being in a folder themselves?

Is there no way to reset the Swatches panel to its default content? When I click the panel's menu, and choose "Restore Default Swatches," it appends a new copy of all the default folders (RGB, CMYK, Greyscale, Pastel, etc). If I "Restore..." several times, it keeps appending and I run out of space and hit the maximum possible number of swatches.

How can I restore just the Swatches Panel to the "out of the box" condition? (Hopefully without resetting Photoshop's preferences?)

Sorry if I missed something, but I haven't paid much attention to the Swatches panel lately and it seems things have changed 🙂

[Semaphoric]

I don't know how they got there, but "OC-1 Natural Wicker" and "OC-3 Lambskin" are Bejamin Moore paint colors.

[Michael J. Hoffman]

OK, that's a little bit helpful, because I think I worked on a client project some time back where they had specified a certain light white paint chip color. Perhaps I added them then. But still... how to get back to the default?

[jane-e]

"Looks like I have to shift click on every one to remove them?"

I don't know how they got there, either, but don't Shift+Click each one. Instead, click the first, then Shift+Click the last to get all of the ones inbetween.

~ Jane

[Michael J. Hoffman]

Thanks Jane-e, I will surely do that. But I wonder how to reset the panel completely? I see a variety of swatches in the top (non-folder) area in different videos, and I believe the defaul is "no" swatches up there, right? I plan to do some training including working with swatches, and don't want to confuse new users by showing something different from what they'd see.