Age in vanilla Skyrim appears to be a matter of extremes: either you're young and wrinkle-free or, if you want some age on your character, varying stages of late-middle aged to elderly no matter which age complexion you actually pick in chargen. These age complexion maps are labeled as "age 40" and "age 50" on their file names, supposedly intended to correlate to both approximate ages for players and NPCs alike, and yet the way the maps have been drawn make them appear more like "age 60" and "age 70", for both men and women.

The truly elderly in the game (Fralia, Esbern, etc.), whom I would consider to be 70+ years old, have their own dedicated normal maps to emphasize their wrinkles, and so they are already properly distinguished from the younger population. But for those characters relying only on complexions to distinguish their ages, their faces aren't far behind their elders while their bodies are thirty years younger.

For me, this is a big fat nope.

This mod aims to bring the appearance of these complexions more in line with their intended age ranges by providing hand-painted, 2k replacements based on numerous photo references of people at those target ages. Since the effects of aging on appearance is an individual process based on a number of factors, I've taken the most common features found in all said photos and hand-drawn them on the age maps in places relative to the normals.

Be aware that the way these maps appear in game may differ from the provided screenshots depending on the lighting, what diffuse and normal maps you have installed, as well as slider values. Extreme slider values/morphs (a la Altmer) may warp the maps beyond the intended results, but this goes for any face texture mod.

For now, this only includes the maleheaddetail_age40, but I do plan on adding more to the mod (including females) if users are interested and as I find the time to get to them.

Installation:
~ Use the mod manager of your choice or copy/paste the contents of the zipped file into your Skyrim folder. If manually installing, you may wish to back up any texture maps this mod overwrites, in case you wish to revert at any point.