How to make background white (it fades from a color to white)

[Armonster]

I was using a picture and used gaussian blur to make it a bit fuzzier. It had a white background though, so I used the magic wand tool to get rid of it. I want to put a color behind this image that fades in from the bottom using the gradient tool. The problem is though that I did not delete all of the white using the magic wand tool, since I used the blur effect, it fades from the gray to white. This area of fading to white stands out against the blue background that I am trying to put behind it.

Is there a simple way to make just the white part transparent?

I could just do this method with the original image.

Also, I can't just use multiply, because the image on top has different shades of gray and if I just use multiply, then it makes the lighter shades of gray blue and just gives everything a gray hue.

Darken almost works but again, the light shades of gray turn blue.

I could just darken the coloring on the whole image and use the darken blending mode if there's nothing else I can do. Is there a good way to darken it? Should I just saturate it more? Because changing the levels slider to make it darker makes where the 'blur' fades to white more noticeable.

[$1r_M4x1mu$]

Hi Armonster

Welcome to PhotoShop Gurus.

In order to have more control over PS Blending modes, you can use customized blending options "Blend if" on Layer>Layer style>blending options.

This may help

Photoshop "Blend if"

[Armonster]

Thanks a bunch! Never knew about that. Very helpful