Best resolution for transforming?

[anesone]

I print 8.5 by 11 black and white line art at 600 dpi halftone screen. I've been scanning originals at 600 dpi. If I need to transform parts of the picture before saving to print, would I get a cleaner image if I scanned the original at a higher resolution, say 1600 dpi, doing the transform, then saving as Grayscale Image at 600 dpi? Or would my final Grayscale images look cleaner if I did all my work at 600 dpi. I understand when going from 1600 to 600 Photoshop drops pixels. I've done so many tests and examinations I've gone bug-eyed. Thoughts?

 

[anesone]

Made a mistake - of course, I do the editing in Grayscale, then convert to Bitmap at 600 dpi halftone for final printing. So question concerns final image in Bitmap, not Grayscale.

 

[jmgalvin]

Here's one way to guage. The standard Adobe Acrobat "Press" setting reduces monotone and lineart to 1200 dpi from anything above 1600 dpi. That would mean that Acrobat "expects" the bitmap to be of rather high resolution. The standard test resolution in the Acrobat "Press" setting is 2400.

Whenever I scan anything but photos into PS I scan at 1200, and sometimes higher if there's text involved. The advantage is that you can always lower resolution without have to resize the image physically smaller. I always find the higher the res, the "crisper' the edges, when you have a 2 hard edged items meeting.