Yea that has been an issue. I have been experimenting and i like how the desert turned out. Its in the middle between the two. And the grainy texture has kind of given it a nice sand look.

As for elevation, the northern area is being a pain. I will post how it looks so far. world color test.jpg

My mountains also don't feel like they have any height to them (besides the fact that my southern ones ended up sunken into the ground lol) Its not too bad as it is for color. I'm not really sure how else i could color it though. I would like the mountains to be taller either way, they feel so small that way. I don't think i have the ability to use your cloud sculpting though.

I have had good luck with Roba's embossing method but i don't know how i would convert that into a heightmap or if they would be colorable from the grayscale embossing uses.