Black & White Image Turns Colored on Mouse Hover

May 02, 2017

You can use CSS to display a colored image as black & white on a web page and the image turned colored when someone hovers the mouse over the picture.

Here’s the HTML and CSS code.

<div class="primary">
  <img src="http://placekitten.com/500/500" />
</div>

<style type="text/css">
  .primary {
    cursor: pointer;
  }

  .primary img {
    filter: url("data:image/svg+xml;utf8,<svg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'><filter id='grayscale'><feColorMatrix type='matrix' values='0.3333 0.3333 0.3333 0 0 0.3333 0.3333 0.3333 0 0 0.3333 0.3333 0.3333 0 0 0 0 0 1 0'/></filter></svg>#grayscale");
    /* Firefox 10+, Firefox on Android */
    -webkit-filter: grayscale(100%);
    filter: grayscale(100%);
    filter: gray;
    /* IE 6-9 */
    -moz-transition: all 0.2s ease-in;
    -o-transition: all 0.2s ease-in;
    -webkit-transition: all 0.2s ease-in;
    transition: all 0.2s ease-in;
  }

  .primary:hover img {
    filter: url("data:image/svg+xml;utf8,<svg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'><filter id='grayscale'><feColorMatrix type='matrix' values='1 0 0 0 0, 0 1 0 0 0, 0 0 1 0 0, 0 0 0 1 0'/></filter></svg>#grayscale");
    -webkit-filter: none;
    filter: none;
  }
</style>

CSS

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Amit Agarwal

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Amit Agarwal is a Google Developer Expert in Google Workspace and Google Apps Script. He holds an engineering degree in Computer Science (I.I.T.) and is the first professional blogger in India.

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