John,
One thing to consider is the whether your lum and the L component of your RGB match before you combine. The easiest way to do that is to use ChannelExtraction with the Lab setting. Apply that to your RGB to get the three subframes. Open your Lum, then open Linear Fit and make the Lum your reference image. Apply the tool to the L component, then recombine the L, a, and b components using Channel Combination.
Hope that helps,
Jim