ways to have grayscale images

[mmcgu1966]

I was on a phone interview recently and was asked a question that I’ve been dwelling on way to long. The question is “if a client had a picture that they wanted to display both in color and as grayscale, how would you do it?”
Immediately, I responded that I would use two pictures, having them swap; the exact process depending on which method worked best for the site over-all.
Apparently, that was the wrong answer, though the interviewer refused to offer alternatives. Now, I know you can use filters in IE and you could always use jQuery to alter the colors, but those answers seem like more work than is needed (for small scale, anyway) and certainly the IE filter isn’t very universal.

Am I seriously missing something? or possibly was the question IE specific? Any thoughts?

[TheDoc]

Off the top of my head, I would use two images as well. Although there are a lot of factors like: will the color image open in a lightbox? Is this happening on hover? Is this a specific instance of the website or will the client have lots of places to do this in?

Then of course I’d do some research and see what the alternatives were.

[Author]

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