How to check hologram depth on overlays details
I always check holos with a loupe first — tilt it under direct light and you'll see the depth pretty quick. If the ghost image lines up and shifts smoothly, it's legit. Lazier overlays look flat and cheap under 365nm UV light; you'll see UV bleeds if the layers aren't tight. I've noticed good overlays also pass scan on a basic PDF417 scanner, so that's a quick litmus test too.
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Checking hologram depth is one of the checks I do on every card I receive, and the technique matters because doing it wrong gives you no useful information. I've seen people hold cards up to bright light directly and then report that the hologram looks flat — that's the wrong method. Here's what actually works.
You need a single-point light source, not diffuse overhead lighting. A desk lamp with a bare bulb, or a phone flashlight. Hold the card at about a 30-degree angle to the light — not perpendicular, not parallel. As you rotate the card slowly, genuine holographic elements produce a continuous color shift that tracks the angle change smoothly. The color moves across the spectrum in a predictable pattern as the angle changes.
The depth you're looking for is visible as a parallax effect: different parts of the holographic element shift color at slightly different times as the card rotates, because they're encoded at different depths within the optical layer. On a genuine card, this gives the hologram a three-dimensional appearance. On a flat printed imitation, the entire element shifts uniformly with no sense of depth, and the color range is typically more limited — you might get a single color shift rather than a full spectral sweep.
A second check is the boundary between the holographic overlay and the card surface underneath. On genuine cards, the overlay is bonded directly to the card material and the transition at the overlay edge is clean and sharp. On cards where the overlay was applied as a separate layer after printing, the edge sometimes shows a slight height difference or the overlay doesn't sit completely flat at the corners.
Not all overlays use the same optical design. Some states use a simple single-image hologram; others use a more complex multi-image element. Knowing what the genuine card's hologram looks like for your specific state — from reference photos or a genuine card you've handled — is more useful than a general "good hologram" description. The depth check tells you whether the optical element has genuine depth encoding; the reference comparison tells you whether it's the right element.