HELP! Photoshop compressing .gif's too much

Ok here's my problem and I;ve never had this happen before. Whenever I create or open an image in PS it looks great. It's clear and great quality. If I save it as a .jpg, it still looks great. But when I save it as a .gif the image loses a lot of quailty. I have my Indexed Color set to the following:
Palette : Local(Selective)
Colors : 265
Forced : Black and White
Dither : Diffusion
Amount : 75%

If anyone can help me figure out why this is happening I would greatly appreciate it. Usually I have the palette set on exact so the .gif looks identical to the .psd But in some cases it won't let me save it as exact but in some cases it will. Thanks for the help.

"Colors : 265"
there's your problem - you need the new type of gif that supports 12 980 228 colors!
in order to get it you may have to upgrade your system and buy a better monitor and 3 licenses for the same copy of PS


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dude - read the help. If a file has more than 265 colors.... it's only natural there's quality loss...

No, my monitor is brand new. And like I said this just started happening. It hasn't always been a problem. Ususally I have it on exact but with images that I have edited with ImageReady, it does this wierd stuff....

[QUOTE=mihai]"Colors : 265"
there's your problem - you need the new type of gif that supports 12 980 228 colors!
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dude - read the help. If a file has more than 265 colors.... it's only natural there's quality loss...[/QUOTE]

There IS a new type of GIF that supports over 16 000 000 colors. It's called PNG.

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Depending on the nature of your image the reduction to 256 colors may or may not be causing the quality loss. Is it a photo, with lots of shades of colors and/or natural skin tone? If so than 256 colors just won't cut it. IOW using a GIF is out of the question, don't even try.

[QUOTE=Nitzanah]
Palette : Local(Selective)
Colors : 265
Forced : Black and White
Dither : Diffusion
Amount : 75%
[/QUOTE]

Don't force the black and white. That'll give you a couple more shades. I like Noise much better than diffusion for a dither type. But the truth is if you need to use a dither then you shouldn't be using GIF. IOW if you set the dither to none, and it doen't look identical to how it looks in Photoshop, then don't use GIF. If you can get away with it, use PNG-24 for absolutely NO quality loss or use JPG if you don't mind the subtle quality loss.

GIF is only good for low color simple graphics and small animations, stuff like that.