Welcome to
RP!
Typically when you want to do smoothing, cloning, sharpening, blurring, on an image, you typically want to affect the entire image. That usually means working on all channels simultaneously (the composite image). It is possibel to work on a channel at a time but you must remember that any changes to the pixel levels in that channel will affect the color of the entire image because every color in the image is made up of the values of the same pixel in all three channels. Perhaps if you care to post an example of what you are try to accomplish with a sample image, you will get the specific technique you are looking for.
Regards,
Murray