At the risk of starting an argument among those with brand preferences, prints coming off of my Epson 2200 printer under a 4X loupe, IMO at least, look as good as prints done from the same file at the professoinal photo lab that I use. I personally swear by Epson printers and wouldn't own another HP, but that's just my opinion. Canon also has a pretty good reputation although I've never owned one of their printers. That said, I can only print to super B paper (13x19) or on roll stuff to 13x44 whereas the lab can do prints to 30x50.

Prints from slides vs. prints from digital files? That's a more interesting question. Some of the new technology, like the Fuji Frontier printer that the lab I help to underwrite uses, allow them to take a slide and generate a print from it via a digital "intermediate" file. The quality of that is excellent and the color fidelity is only a question of how picky the folks running it at the lab are vs. how picky you are. They're excellent.

So, I guess it becomes pretty much a toss up if you're working for a really good slide and a really high quality digital file. Beyond that it becomes a question of the calibration of your computer monitor and how well the printer will translate what you see on the screen onto paper, and how well all of that relates to the source slide. I suppose if all of that sounds like a bunch of handwaving, well... I don't know if any of this helps, Bud, but I tried.

Gary