Ascension's Atlas Style In GIMP

[OldSkoolRPG]

I have off and on attempted to follow this tutorial and every time it looks great except for the mountains and hills which don't show up in the end product. So I am working through it again and I have just completed step 9 and it looks just like in the tutorial photo.



Step 10 says to duplicate the Ocean Layer and then on that layer Render Difference Clouds twice and Normalize and this is what it should look like. The landmass is not at all visible through the rendered and normalized clouds.



But when I do that this is what I get. The landmass is pretty clearly visible through the clouds.



I think this is the point where I am messing up and doing something wrong so my mountains don't turn out right in the end. Can anyone suggest what I might be doing wrong to get different results than the tutorial? Am I just overreacting to an insignificant difference? I am a complete n00b with this kind of stuff so I have no idea on my own what to look for.