get printed or print yourself?

I have a Lexmark X83. It's an all-in-one.
There are two settings that I use when printing photos: Print quality and paper type. I always set paper type to "glossy/photo paper" since I'm using kodak's ultima photo paper (the best they seem to offer). Then I set print quality which options are "quick", "normal", "photo", "max photo". I always use "max photo". I've never tried other settings. If the ink usage vs quality efficiency is moderate, I may just sacrifice quality since no one bothers to really look at the fine detail in my shots anyway. If I really want to go with the ridiculous quality, I can always give them my website.

The printed resolution thing is an interesting topic.
To me, unless you are wanting to put a loupe to the image or your intent requires it, full resolution on the printer end is over-kill.

Hope this helped.

For price, convenience and guaruntee the high street print shop has got it everytime!

I'm curious UncleDoug, do you find that full resolution on soft finish papers like the rag you mentioned increases dot gain?

This is a fun one.

Technically dot gain is more of an inherent characteristic of the media itself. So print resolution should not be a factor of dot gain, unless you have a variable-droplet inkjet printer. But even then the variation wil be rather insignificant. It's more of the issue that at higher print resolutions you are laying down more ink per square area that you have to deal with.
Which, from some angles, could be interpreted as dot gain.

You're right, it would not necessarily be the increased resolution, but the increased amount of ink being laid down. In some instances I would think the paper could not handle it, leading to some blending. I can see no other reason that Epson would have profiles for their papers for both 1440 and 2880 dpi.

You got it!
There are 8 resolution settings on our Roland.
Some media have profiles for all settings while others only 3 or 4.
Photo/glossy media seem to be "compatible" at more resolutions than rag/canvas.

I use my Canon printer up to 13x19 also, just not for pictures I intend to mat and frame or sell.