How to install Photoshop 2026 correctly on Windows
A clean install takes about five minutes. Doing these steps in order avoids nearly all after-install problems.
Before you start
Close other Adobe applications and any suite that hooks graphics drivers, such as screen recorders or overlay tools. Make sure at least 8 GB is free on the target drive and 20 GB on the drive you will use for scratch files. If an older Photoshop is installed, you do not need to remove it, but do not run both during setup.
Step-by-step installation
- Extract the archive with
123456. Do not run the setup from inside WinRAR. Extraction first, always — running from the archive is the classic cause of missing file errors during setup. - Right click the setup executable → Run as administrator. Setup needs to install runtimes and register components system-wide, which a standard user account cannot always do.
- Choose a short install path. The default is fine. Accented characters in custom paths are a known source of plug-in loading problems.
- Wait for completion without launching other installers. Simultaneous setups fight over the Windows Installer service and the shared Visual C++ runtime.
- Start Photoshop once, then set preferences. Fonts and Neural Filters finish indexing at first launch.
Two settings worth changing immediately
In Edit → Preferences → Scratch Disks, select your SSD and leave the system disk unchecked if it is small. In Edit → Preferences → Performance, give Photoshop around 70% of RAM and keep the graphics processor enabled. These two changes have more impact on day-to-day speed than any "optimizer" utility.
Fonts missing after install? Sign out of Windows and back in. Newly registered fonts are enumerated at session start, and in older Windows builds they do not appear in running applications.