Man pages are out of date.

[calebcase]

From man salt-cloud:

       --raw-out
              Print the output from the salt command in raw python form, this is suitable for re-reading the output into an executing python script with eval.

       --text-out
              Print the output from the salt command in the same form the shell would.

       --yaml-out
              Print the output from the salt command in yaml.

       --json-out
              Print the output from the salt command in json.

       --no-color
              Disable all colored output.

But salt-cloud -Q --json-out fails:

$ salt-cloud -Q --json-out
Usage: salt-cloud

salt-cloud: error: no such option: --json-out

From salt-cloud -h:

  Output Options:
    Configure your preferred output format

    --out=OUTPUT, --output=OUTPUT
                        Print the output from the 'salt-cloud' command using
                        the specified outputter. The builtins are 'no_return',
                        'grains', 'yaml', 'overstatestage', 'json', 'pprint',
                        'nested', 'raw', 'highstate', 'quiet', 'key', 'txt',
                        'virt_query'.
    --out-indent=OUTPUT_INDENT, --output-indent=OUTPUT_INDENT
                        Print the output indented by the provided value in
                        spaces. Negative values disables indentation. Only
                        applicable in outputters that support indentation.
    --no-color, --no-colour
                        Disable all colored output

--out=json does work.