Black & White Image Turns Colored on Mouse Hover

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>
Amit Agarwal

Amit Agarwal

Google Developer Expert, Google Cloud Champion

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.

Amit has developed several popular Google add-ons including Mail Merge for Gmail and Document Studio. Read more on Lifehacker and YourStory

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