Thanks for the help lads !
One follow up question. The character array is stored in pixels .. r,g,b,r,g,b,r,g,b
Is the mask applied to each color or each pixel ? as in.. should it be - r * gaussianMask[0][0] g * gaussianMask[0][1] b *gaussianMask[0][2]
or r * gaussianMask[0][0] g * gaussianMask[0][0] b * gaussianMask[0][0].. r * gaussianMask[0][1] g * gaussianMask[0][1] b * gaussianMask[0][1]