Live guassian blur is a great improvement, but the masking at this point should be a a gradient of 'effect' not simply masking transparency of the original image. If I'm using a soft brush on a live effect, the gradient between 'black' and 'white' should have an intermittent affect on the intensity of the effect, akin to the iris blur going from no affect to max affect.
As of now, you can just see the underlying original to varying degrees of transparency.
