My Mom has borrowed some color 35mm slides from my Uncle and wants to have some prints made.

I've been Googling and it seems the vast majority of hits involve scanning and digital printing. Does anyone still do photo prints/enlargments from slides?

I'm in Centeral California, but if mailing is involved that doesn't make much difference.

Keep in mind that "scanning" can include high resolution slide scanners. Many commercial shops that do scanning and printing, will also have a slide scanner on hand.

I have a PrimeFilm slide scanner which I brought to digitise my parents' collection. Even with my modest 3 in 1 HP printer the results are very acceptable up to A4 size, so I would suggest that a service doing the same thing, as Tony suggests, would give very acceptable results.

I recently scanned hundreds of slides using the slide scanner that came with the HP Scanjet. Prints are perfect. Let me know if you want more info.

If you don't scan them, printing would require special photo paper as slides themselves are positives. That most definitely involves a specialty lab and a service that is disappearing fast (it's always been ultra-niche).

Scanning them will leave you with excellent digital images that you can do whatever you want with and have printed anywhere. I wouldn't even consider trying to find a place that did prints from slides as it's not worth the time/effort - and likely cost.

Historically, there have been a number of slide printing schemes, such as Cibachrome (well known for having vivid colors), but these have all been largely obsoleted by scanning and digital printing. You avoid all the noxious chemicals, and you get excellent output. (And, as a nice plus, your lab only needs one color printer that doesn't care whether the originals were on slides or negatives or digital or whatever.)

As such, the question you really should be asking is what's the best slide scanner. I've heard many good things about the Nikon scanners with "Digital ICE" (which uses a fourth wavelength of light that tends to highlight dust and scratches, allowing for automatic cleanup). At the higher end, a friend of mine swears by his pricey Imacon. Commercial slide scans are done with drum scanners. You pay big bucks for drum scans, so you only do those for your serious favorites.

Thanks All, Not really interested in buying either a scanner or creating a personal hazardous chem dump. (I did the chemical dump thing is college) I really just wanted to send these few slides off to a classic film lab to have some prints made. Looks like I've missed the boat there.

These days, most "classical film labs" have gone digital and should have the facilities to scan your slides (for a price) and then print them (for another price). This is infinitely preferable to the traditional way that these labs would do it, either printing using an unusual and expensive process like Cibachrome (for a pricey price) or doing a "copy negative" and then printing with traditional color negative paper (for a less pricey price but with lower quality as well).