Zoomed and then cropped or cropped and then zoomed I really don't think either method makes a difference. I've done a few things with photoshop and it never seemed to matter what I decided to do first.
Botom line these images were zoomed in or cropped and expanded.
http://imageshack.com/a/img801/6426/f7pc.gif
^Yes that's me ripping it up in the GIF. :)