ImageCache or different CCK image fields? I'm setting up a website with lots of different image presets (probably up to five or six), so basically depending what page and what view my story teasers end up in they will have different dimensions, however, the web publishers need to have as much control as possible over the way the photos are cropped and resized. Is it better to use ImageCache or have different CCK image fields and have the publishers crop the images to their liking in an external image editor such as photoshop and then upload all of the presets to Drupal so the story can automatically display the right preset depending on what page and view displays it?

Also, is it possible to set up different presets for ImageCache depending on which view displays the image? Finally, it doesn't seem to me that imagecache offers cropping functionality per se. Am I correct?
Imagecache can crop. Exact or relative dimensions.

And yes, you can choose the preset for an image field in views. It is very easy. And you can manipulate it with code, but that would be much more complex. I don't think you need this.

If you really need the publishers to manipulate the image on the node edit form, just use IMCE. It integrates with Imagecache, so they could use that.

But the more you can automatize the process, the better.

So try to allow your publishers to send images the way they like (only being bigger than the minimum size you will ever use), and then you use imagecache dynamically to crop and resize the images the way you want over all the places on your site.