Starting with Photoshop CS2, we gain a substantial new ability. Placed objects remain as Smart Objects, giving you the ability to access all of the original raster data. This essentially allows you to size and resize an object repeatedly without quality loss.
1. Choose File>Place... (this just screams to be remapped to a keyboard shortcut).
2. Navigate to the object you want to add (it must be a compatible graphics format).
3. Certain file formats (such as multi-page PDFs) may offer an additional dialog box with self-explanatory options.
4. Adjust the scaling of the placed object using your mouse or the Options Bar.
5. Click the checkbox or press Enter twice.
You can now scale up the object to its original raster size or even infinitely if it was a vector object as Photoshop reads in the original data. You can also edit the original object by double-clicking the smart object thumbnail in the layers palette.
Needless to say, Place will become part of your regular workflow. Lets make it even faster!
1. Press Cmd+K (Ctrl+K) to call up your Photoshop preferences.
2. From the General preferences tab, choose Resize Image During Paste/Place. This will save you some time, as the placed image will scale down to fit inside your document window.
3. Click OK and starting placing.