The White Guardian

First and foremost, this question would be much better suited as a reply to the main KS3P thread. I don't think it needs a separate thread. In fact, if you hadn't tagged me, chances are I never would've seen this question, whereas I follow the KS3P thread quite closely.
In any case: the darkness is due to the color grading. Delete the color grading node in its entirety. The next version of KS3P will have an in-game editor that allows anyone to tweak the color grading on the fly so it doesn't make everything unnecessarily shady.
The second problem is like the first one, but the culprit is the Depth Of Field node. Once again, delete the DOF node and the blurring will disappear. I'm working on a custom piece of code for KS3P that gives a more dynamic DOF since currently it's a static distance. In other words, in the future, placing the camera near an object with said object in center frame will blur the background, whereas putting the nearby object in the screen corner blurs the foreground as it should.
Biggest problem is that this will require raycasting to find the appropriate focus distance, which isn't the most efficient maneuver. Moreover, to get a more accurate focus distance, I'd have to equalize across a matrix built around the screen center, IE the effect gets more intensive the more realism you want. I'm looking into ways to optimize this currently (for example by having the GPU raycast) so it's probably not going to be in the next release, but just so you know, I'm working on eliminating the problems KS3P has currently.

@Pretorian28715 I have written several guides on the subject as well as made several videos.
I also plan to make a video covering all I know about the subject at some point within these next two weeks.
In that tutorial I will be covering:
- Creation of planets with semi-realistic physical properties
- What most of the values do
- How to add oceans
- How to create a realistic atmosphere by hand
- How to choose PQSMods in a clever way
- Various PQSMods
- KittopiaTech
 
And in a sequel:
- Scatterer
- EVE
- PlanetShine
- DOE
- Custom terrain scatters
- Custom surface textures
 
And later possibly:
- How to create your own, custom PQSMods (+ some basic C#)
 
But what exactly are you trying to create? I may have some tips and tricks for you.