Forensic Capture: Eight Per-Corner Macros That Catch What a Single Photo Misses
Forensic Capture is CardGrade's premium grade: eight per-corner macros, stitched live, for sharper whitening, fraying, and edge-wear detection.
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Forensic Capture is CardGrade's premium grade: eight per-corner macros, stitched live, for sharper whitening, fraying, and edge-wear detection.
CardGrade now gives you two ways to grade a card, and both run on the same engine. The Intelligence Grade is the standard grade included on every paid plan: you upload one full-card photo and CGI Vision AI returns PSA, BGS, and CGC predictions across 47 inspection points. Forensic Capture is the premium grade. It swaps the single photo for eight macro close-ups — one for every corner, front and back — and feeds the AI far more detail on the exact spots that decide a top grade.
Both grades cost one credit. Both return the same complete set of outputs. The only thing that changes is how much of the card the AI gets to look at — and on high-value cards, that difference matters.
This guide covers what Forensic Capture is, why per-corner macros catch defects a single photo can't resolve, who should use it, and how it compares to the standard Intelligence Grade.
Forensic Capture is a premium grading mode in the CardGrade dashboard. Instead of photographing the whole card once, it walks you through eight tight close-ups: each of the four corners on the front, then each of the four corners on the back. On-screen alignment guides help you frame and light every shot, and as you capture each corner, CardGrade stitches the macros into a single composite live — so by the time you finish the last corner, the analysis is essentially ready.
CGI Vision AI then grades the card using that macro-level detail. The result is the same as any CardGrade grade — predicted PSA, BGS, and CGC grades plus subgrades for centering, corners, edges, and surface — but built from a much closer look at the parts of the card that decide whether it lands as a gem.
This comes down to one thing: resolution where it counts.
A single full-card photo has to spread a finite number of pixels across the entire 2.5" × 3.5" card. The features that decide a gem-mint grade — corner whitening, edge fraying, hairline nicks — are some of the smallest details on the card. In a full-frame shot, those details can shrink below what the image can actually resolve. A faint whitening dot on a corner might read as nothing more than a slightly soft pixel.
A macro close-up of a single corner fills the entire frame with just that corner. Same camera, but now every pixel is spent on the one area a professional grader puts under a loupe. Whitening shows up as whitening. Fraying shows up as fraying. A clean corner is clearly clean. By capturing all eight corners this way, Forensic Capture gives the AI the kind of close detail that a one-shot photo simply has to average away.
That sharper detail flows straight into the corner and edge subgrades — and corners and edges are where most high-grade submissions actually fall short. A card can have flawless centering and a spotless surface and still drop from a 10 to a 9 on a single soft corner. For more on how the AI reads these issues, see how AI detects card issues and our card edge & surface grading guide.
| Intelligence Grade | Forensic Capture | |
|---|---|---|
| What the AI sees | One full-card photo | Eight per-corner macros (front & back) |
| Engine | CGI Vision AI | CGI Vision AI |
| Inspection points | 47 | 47 |
| Outputs | PSA / BGS / CGC predictions + subgrades | Same complete output |
| Best at | Fast checks, bulk pre-screening | Sharper whitening, fraying & edge-wear detail |
| Available on | Every paid plan | Pro & Dealer plans |
| Cost | 1 credit | 1 credit |
The Intelligence Grade is the right tool most of the time. It's fast, it's on every paid plan, and a single full-card photo is more than enough to sort a stack of cards or run a quick check before you decide what's worth a closer look. (If you want even more precise centering on the standard grade, see our Precision Grading announcement.)
Forensic Capture is what you reach for when the stakes — and the card — justify spending a little more time at capture for a much closer look.
Forensic Capture is built for the cards where small defects carry big consequences:
If you're grading a common modern card to sort a bulk lot, the Intelligence Grade is plenty. If you're about to send a chase card to a grading company, Forensic Capture is the closer look that protects the submission.
It takes a bit longer than snapping a single photo — eight close-ups instead of one — but for a card headed to PSA, BGS, or CGC, that's a few extra seconds against a multi-week, paid submission.
The two grades are designed to work together. Use the Intelligence Grade to triage — run your whole stack, fast and cheap, and find the cards that look like real candidates. Then use Forensic Capture on the finalists: the handful of cards you're seriously considering sending out, where the corners need a much harder look before you commit fees and shipping.
That two-step flow is exactly how experienced collectors avoid wasting money on submissions that come back below the value threshold. For the full strategy, read our guides on pre-screening before PSA or BGS and comparing the grading companies, then dig into the company-specific details for PSA, BGS, and CGC.
Forensic Capture is available on the Pro and Dealer plans. The standard Intelligence Grade is included on every paid plan, and both grades cost one credit each — there's no premium charged per Forensic grade beyond the plan it lives on. Forensic capacity is also coming to credit packs as Pro credits down the road; for now, a Pro or Dealer subscription is the way to use it.
You can compare what each plan includes on the features page and the pricing page, or see both grades side by side on how it works.
Forensic Capture is CardGrade's premium grade. Instead of one full-card photo, it guides you through eight macro close-ups — one for every corner, front and back. CardGrade stitches the macros into a composite live as you capture them, then CGI Vision AI grades the card with that extra corner detail. It returns the same PSA, BGS, and CGC predictions as a standard grade and costs one credit.
Both are CGI Vision AI grades, both return PSA, BGS, and CGC predictions across 47 inspection points, and both cost one credit. The Intelligence Grade reads a single full-card photo. Forensic Capture swaps that for eight per-corner macros (front and back), giving the AI sharper detail on whitening, fraying, and edge wear — the small defects that decide gem-mint grades.
Forensic Capture is available on the Pro and Dealer plans. The Intelligence Grade is included on every paid plan. Both grades cost one credit each.
High-value cards, gem-mint candidates (PSA 10, BGS Black Label, CGC Pristine), and any card you're about to send to PSA, BGS, or CGC. It's most useful on cards where corner whitening, edge wear, or fraying is what separates a 9 from a 10.
No. Forensic Capture is a pre-grading tool designed to closely match how PSA, BGS, and CGC would grade a card, so you can decide which cards are worth submitting. The official slab still comes from the grading company — Forensic Capture just helps you submit smarter.
Stop guessing at the corners. Start your free 3-day trial, grade your stack with the Intelligence Grade, and put your best cards under Forensic Capture before they ever leave your hands.
Pre-screen your cards before submitting to PSA, BGS, or CGC. Start free 3-day trial.
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Founder, CardGrade
Jamie Budesky is the founder of CardGrade and the engineer behind its AI vision grading pipeline. An Army veteran and IT specialist (DoD, since 2017), he writes about card grading, AI/ML grading technology, and collecting strategy — grounded in CardGrade's own grading data.
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