re: "What color is Mars, anyway?"
I agree with most of what you say, but I'm not sure about the blueness of the sky of Mars.
Compared to Earth, Mars has lots of very fine dust. IMO, there's just a hint of sunset to the sunlight all the time. Turner would have loved painting on Mars.
The skies always have a pearly hint, that turns leaden when things get more dusty, then finally goes ochre - at least that's what the Vikings saw.
But at the end of the day, the images that look cold, grey, and ugly are better, IMO than the ones that look vibrant and exciting. (At least as in closer to reality).
Isn't it fun that we get access to the raw images, and software that lets us do this ourselves!