I've been playing around with a variation of my previous method. It's not perfected, even to the standard of my previous tutorials, yet, so I'm not going to give a detailed method yet.
Basically, I created a top layer named Peaks. I filled this with solid noise(in this case Clouds followed by several iterations of Difference Clouds; still lazy) in a greyscale range from about 175 to 255. I'd like to do this in 16-bit, but I'm not sure any of the tools, even in CS, actually produce 16-bit variations. I put a black Layer Mask on this and drew in peaks using reasonably thin lines and a bit of Brush-Fu.
Below that, I created a Valleys layer. Same solid noise method, only with a greyscale range of about 0 to 80. This time I drew valleys in on the black Layer Mask using a dendritic method.
On the bottom, I created a Midrange layer. No mask this time as it's the base. I did solid noise at about a 88 to 168 range.
I applied a variation(that still isn't quite working for me) of the Ridge method I outlined at the beginning of this thread on the Layer Masks. I also tried to apply some of Gecko's idea for valleys from memory.
If I can perfect this method it looks like it will be a better, if more labor-intensive, way of hand-designing heightfields(given a limited set of tools). I'm hoping having a greater number of narrower(and more varied because of the clamped snoise) terraced greys will make it easier to blend together with lower blurs and narrower spatters. This should make it easier to maintain a desired geometry without having it melt away into a blurred, noised-out mess.
While I think this might be passable, in itself, I think it also might be a good start for a faster erosion stage.
For the moment I'll put up the resulting HF and a Gradient Mapped and Lighting Effectsed image. I have a Bryce render baking in the oven right now.
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