I seem to run into a dead end.

I have been able to perform an image transformation into a smaller
image, however I always seem to lose a color channel.

Can anyone help me?

Here is the code below which does the transformation:
//Load Image into a buffer
    bufimage = ImageIO.read(file);
//Caculate sizes
    int newWidth, newHeight, width,height;
    width = bufimage.getWidth();
    height = bufimage.getHeight();
    newWidth = (int)(width * newSize);
    newHeight = (int)(height * newSize);

    BufferedImage newbufimage = new BufferedImage(newWidth, newHeight,
BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB); //Loss of color
    BufferedImageOp op = null;
    op = new
AffineTransformOp(AffineTransform.getScaleInstance(newSize,newSize),null);
    op.filter(bufimage, newbufimage);

//Now write the image to file - 1. opening a new file
    String outfile = file.getPath().substring(0,
file.getPath().lastIndexOf('\\') +
1).concat(file.getName().substring(0,
file.getName().indexOf('.')).concat("NEW.jpg"));
    File newFile = new File(outfile);

//Write to file
    ImageIO.write(newbufimage, "jpg", newFile);
    System.out.println("Wrote " + outfile + " to file");
//Clean up
    bufimage.flush();
    bufimage = null;