JPEG with RGB/sRGB gets loaded as R8/Grayscale

[affuso]

Try to open the attached image in Affinity Photo. You'll get a mostly transparent image with a few gray-ish pixels. This is in affinity 1.9.0.932. Doesn't happen in any other application. ImageMagick identifies it as: "JPEG 64x64 64x64+0+0 8-bit sRGB 31529B 0.000u 0:00.006" so I'm confused why Affinity would consider it gray-scale.

[Joachim_L]

Welcome to the Affinity forums @affuso!

Whenever you upload an image it will be processed by the forum software. That said, your image loads fine, because it was changed. Try to zip the image and upload again.

[affuso]

Good point. Attached as .zip. Also clearly shows the forum software manages to handle this correctly

cropped.zip

Edited February 12, 2021 by affuso

[Joachim_L]

Remove the cropping clipping path or deactivate it.

[affuso]

I haven't put a cropping path in there myself (can a JPEG even store a cropping path?) If that's the cause then I'm all set, I simply haven't seen a cropping path _in a JPEG_ before. Can you shed some light how I can get a cropping path in a JPEG?

[Joachim_L]

5 minutes ago, affuso said:

can a JPEG even store a cropping path

Something new to me too. But maybe Adobe PS CC2019 can do, which seems to be creator software? I am not a file format expert, so maybe others have an explanation?

[MEB]

Hi @affuso,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
The clipping-path was in the JPG. To use clipping paths in Affinity apps and export as JPG's do the following:

1. open the image you want 
2. create the clipping path with the Pen Tool as usual or other vector tools/shapes. Make sure it's then filled with a color - any color will do
3. drag the path layer over the thumbnail of the image layer in the Layers panel (you should see a small vertical blue line appear on the right of the image thumbnail when you drag the path layer over the thumbnail of the image layer - drop it at that point. You have nested the path to the image layer.
4. double-click on the path layer to give it a name - fill in the name you want (you need to do this so you can later select this path in InDesign/Photoshop)
5. go to File Export select JPG, set the options you want as usual, then click the More button and tick Convert clips to paths. Export the file.

You will find the clipping path(s) in the Paths panel if you open the JPG in Adobe Photoshop. Conversely JPG's with clipping paths saved in Photoshop will open as vector masks nested to the image layer in Affinity Designer/Photo.

[affuso]

Ah ok, that makes sense, thanks! The thing that tripped me up though is that in the original image I was dealing with (which I can't share) the clipping path cut out a black/white area, and then Affinity converted the whole image to grayscale, so removing the clipping path didn't quite work as expected. Thanks everyone, I think this can be closed!