[Perm]Should images come in at 100%

Question

I've always said that importing images to a layout application should be done so at the actual size the image will print (hence, no resizing in ID2 or other layout apps).
Does this still hold true or am I thinking the old days?

Answer 1

Some thoughts on this topic:
1. Because I have to open just about every screenshot in Photoshop anyway (if not to crop them, at least to convert them to CMYK), I will usually resize (but not resample, i.e., I change the dpi, but not the number of pixels) them there so that they do place at 100% -- I do most of my placing using scripts and it's just easier on the script if the image starts out at the right size (in terms of space on the page).
2. I will occasionally upsample using nearest neighbor. I found that making the image 200% was sometimes benificial to the sharpness of the printed image -- that's another thing you can't do with screen captures: sharpen them. I've posted at length on this before, but it comes down to providing more robust edges for the elements in the capture to protect against whatever algorithm the RIP uses to upsample for printing -- typically, a RIP doesn't know that the image is a screen capture, so it is likely to upsample to the resolution of the imaging device using bicubic.
3. When upsampling the image yourself, using nearest neighbor, it's safe only to upsample by an even multiple of 100% until you get to very large values; but because I discovered that going past 200% never bought me anything, I never did get to those very large numbers -- if you use other than an exact multiple of 100%, then the upsampled image will have some amount of inconsistency of things like strokes in type.
4. Perfect circles, particularly small ones are a bear. They look good on screen because of antialiasing. If you need to extract one of these buttons to use as a symbol in your text (Windows XP uses a lot of circular buttons), then you're in trouble. I've tackled this by:
a. Use bicubic to blow up the image of the button up to just about fill the screen in Photoshop.
b. Drag out a circular selection and select the huge button.
c. Copy and paste into a new document with a transparent background.
d. Now use bicubic again to reduce the image back down to twice the original resolution.
e. With another copy of the original button, double its size using nearest neighbor at 200%.
f. Select the contents of the button attempting to stay within the border and copy and paste it into the other image.
The result is not perfect, far from it, but it looks circular in print rather than horribly stairstepped.
Dave