selective blurring based upon color select tool

[Charles2493598871rj]

I want to blur areas of background based upon the colors selected and masked with the color range tool.  I've been duplicating my layer with Ctrl J. Adding a mask with the color range tool after selecting the desired color and while it shows in the mask when I go back to the layer and use a filter, gaussian blur, the masked color isn't blurred.

My purpose is to take my forest background and add depth of field based upon the colors.

Any help or ideas would be appreciated.

[Semaphoric]

Could you post a screen shot of your Layers panel?

[Charles2493598871rj]

[Stephen Marsh]

Is the mask or image selected when you blur?

P.S. I'm just mentioning this as an aside, not as a solution to your current problem... Sometimes it can be useful to visualise, isolate and work on the colour data and not the luminosity:

[Charles2493598871rj]

The image is selected.

[Bojan Živković]

What are image dimensions? A 9.3-pixel blur is sometimes not sufficient. Do you preview results at a 100% view?

[Charles2493598871rj]

I've run the blur up to 50 pixels.   While it shows as blurred in the view when I select OK the blur is lost when the mask is applied.

[Semaphoric]

In trying this on an image similar to yours, I noticed the Color Range selection had lots of detail in the mask. When the image is blurred, the effect only shows through the sharp mask. Blurring the mask made it too dark, so I ran Image > Adjustments > Levels on it afterwards to clean it up.

[Charles2493598871rj]

Thanks.  I found that I was setting the "fuzziness" too low in the color select tool.  When I expanded the range the effect became noticeable.  Your level adjustment worked nicely to clean it up.