New coinage, but not quite mine

kw: words, definitions

I didn't quite coin this word, or at least I am not the first to coin it, but I made it up on the fly and then looked to see if it exists. It is not found in any online dictionary I've searched, so I plan to add these entries to TheFreeDictionary as soon as I complete this post:

• youthify, vt, Verb form of youth. To give something a younger appearance. past & ppt youthified, 3 pers sing youthifies.
• youthification, n, from youthify. The action or process of making something appear newer or younger.

I produced the word when writing class materials for a short course in digital darkroom techniques. The blur operation, I wrote, is used "to reduce noise or to youthify a portrait."

I remember a photographer describing the enlarger (wet darkroom) technique of making a flattering portrait of an older person. One step is to hold a piece of thin muslin halfway between the enlarger lens and the print paper, moving it so no fabric grid will show. This softens the image, making the small wrinkles disappear. Judicious use of digital blurring has the same effect.

It also reminded me of a friend who began to get cataracts at the rather early age of 45. By age 55 he had to have them removed. This was about 25 years ago, soon after the new outpatient techniques were developed. He had the procedure, and new plastic lenses implanted, and went home. He looked at himself in the mirror and asked his wife (who told me), "Where did all these wrinkles come from?" She said they'd been there a while, but his vision had been too blurry to see them. His bad eyes youthified him!