Loosing colors after Imgcodecs.imread(imgName, IMREAD_COLOR ), image is converted to grayscale

Just trying to load .jpg image with imread() and IMREAD_COLOR flag
The image is loaded successfully, but converted to Grayscale. in mean, imsow() show grayscaled image.

The only way to get colored image, is to use IMREAD_REDUCED_COLOR_2 flag
Here is some image data:

Color representation: sRGB
Width: 3456
Height: 4608
Hor. resolution: 72dpi
Ver. resolution: 72dpi
Bit depth: 24
Resolution unit: 2

EXIF version: 0220


The only way I get colors is to use the IMREAD_REDUCED_COLOR_2 flag, but this way, the image size reduced 1/2.

What am I missing?

Is this just a behavior of imshow() function, while image actually preserves all colors?