css transition opacity fade background

I am doing a transition where it fades into transparent white, when a user is hovering an image.

My problem is that I need to change the color, that it fades to, to black. I have tried just simply adding background:black; to the class that contains the transition, but it does not work unfurtunately, it's still fading into white transparent.

The css code I am using is:

.hover:hover {
  opacity: 0.2;
}

.item-fade {
  background: black;
  opacity: 0.8;
  transition: opacity .25s ease-in-out;
  -moz-transition: opacity .25s ease-in-out;
  -webkit-transition: opacity .25s ease-in-out;
}

<p>Hover image, the white opacity needs to be black :/</p>
<img src="//placehold.it/100x100" class="hover item-fade" />

Wrap your image with a span element with a black background.

.img-wrapper {
  display: inline-block;
  background: #000;
}

.item-fade {
  vertical-align: top;
  transition: opacity 0.3s;
  -webkit-transition: opacity 0.3s;
  opacity: 1;
}

.item-fade:hover {
  opacity: 0.2;
}

<span class="img-wrapper">
   <img class="item-fade" src="https://via.placeholder.com/100x100/cf5" />
</span>

It's not fading to "black transparent" or "white transparent". It's just showing whatever color is "behind" the image, which is not the image's background color - that color is completely hidden by the image.

If you want to fade to black(ish), you'll need a black container around the image. Something like:

.ctr {
    margin: 0; 
    padding: 0;
    background-color: black;
    display: inline-block;
}

and

<div class="ctr"><img ... /></div>

http://jsfiddle.net/6xJQq/13/

.container {
    display: inline-block;
    padding: 5px; /*included padding to see background when img apacity is 100%*/
    background-color: black;
    opacity: 1;
}

.container:hover {
    background-color: red;
}

img {
    opacity: 1;
}

img:hover {
    opacity: 0.7;
}

.transition {
    transition: all .25s ease-in-out;
    -moz-transition: all .25s ease-in-out;
    -webkit-transition: all .25s  ease-in-out;
}