Trying to make a modified map of South America with real-world height data

[Redrobes]

QGIS can handle many types of file format related to height maps but I am not personally familiar with the one your using so cannot comment. DEM is more of a classification of many file formats. For example ArcASCII is a common one for height maps but there are many. For GeoTIFF I think it should handle that one and there are other apps which can too. If you have more problems then post the URL link to the earth explorer with the settings that you want from the data - or upload the DEM data file in a zip file here and ill take a look. We can host ZIP files and I believe USGS data is public domain.

[Coriolis]

QGIS can handle many types of file format related to height maps but I am not personally familiar with the one your using so cannot comment. DEM is more of a classification of many file formats. For example ArcASCII is a common one for height maps but there are many. For GeoTIFF I think it should handle that one and there are other apps which can too. If you have more problems then post the URL link to the earth explorer with the settings that you want from the data - or upload the DEM data file in a zip file here and ill take a look. We can host ZIP files and I believe USGS data is public domain.

Thanks for the help! The specific site I'm using for download is https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/
The specific data sets I've tried playing with are the Digital Elevation category, and the specific data I used was GTOPO30. There were four source images I downloaded for South America:
GT30W100S.tif
GT30W100N.tif
GT30W60S.tif
GT30W60N.tif

If you think we can do better than what I tried with adjusted color levels, please do share, and thanks for the help!