Last week, my little publishing imprint Ceres Books released a new title—It’s All Speculation by Tom Hieronymus. It is a collection of writings by Tom on markets and trading from his career during the 1950s through the 1990s. I wanted a picture for the cover that represented two things: i) the period in the agricultural markets when Tom did most of his writing, and ii) Tom’s great sense of humor. I realized that I used a picture in my book Back to the Futures that was perfect. The picture showed two people in suits holding pigs on the floor of the old Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) trading floor on the opening day of live hog futures trading on February 28, 1966. The only problem was that the original picture, shown below, was in black and white. This would not be very attractive for a modern book cover.
Somewhere I had read about websites where you could get old pictures colorized using artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. I thought why not give it a try? I was blown away by the result and how little it cost. There are lots of these sites now. I used the YouCam Online Editor. After some experimentation with the free version, I realized this stuff really worked and it was worth paying a little for access to their full tools. I think I paid $19.99 for the minimum number of credits. My finished product is shown below. It took me about 5 minutes to generate the colorized version at the site. I was even able to give the picture blue shading to match the overall color of the cover for the book. Talk about the magic of AI!
I would be remiss if I did not thank the CME for permitting me to use this “old” photo on the cover. It is much appreciated.
You can learn more about It’s All Speculation at the webpage for the book found here.
Laurence J. Norton Chair of Agricultural Marketing
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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