everyone must have noticed that GIF files are very low in quality as well as space, but i've seen some gif files which have a really high quality. Does anyone know how to make such high quality GIFS? i use Photoshop cs2. i think you have to select the Perceptual option when you use the save As option, but i'm not sure.

In what sense do you agree that a certain GIF file is of high-quality? GIF files that are of equal image quality as JPEG files? Or animation so smooth it can be pronounced as good as a SWF file?

Grab an example of a GIF file and show it off here. I mean if you can get a me a GIF wallpaper I'd be glad to take a look at it and tell you if it is of same quality as a JPEG file.

Look at .
Its a gif, and if photobucket.com didn't resize it, it would be much higher quality. I'm assuming you have Windows. Hit Ctrl+Shift+S to Save-As. Save as a CompuServe gif. Hit save. to the right of "Palette," choose Local ..., whichever. Or Master... whichever. The colors should be 256. I find it best to have forced: black and white. Interlaced or not, it doesn't really matter. Reply when you read this, because i need to take that picture down soon.

the only way i encourage to use gif is for small images like smiles or favicons etc. it is very small in size, but if you have an image which does not take lots of colours, index it to 8bit - 256 colours or even 7bit that is 128 colors maybe even index it to less colours if you have such image.. if the quality of your image didn't change just save it as png compressed 9 and you'll see that it will be less in size than saving it in gif format, usually the deafult saving of png is true colour which use lots of space and usually the qualiity is too good.. you can index pictures somewhere in image -> mode -> RGB, Grayscale, Indexed Good luck.

by the way, the other good way of using GIF is for animations

Well, GIFs don't need to be small. It's just the number of colors really. If its a black and white sketch, he should by all means use a gif, not a jpg, regardless of the size.
And by the way, I think he knew that gifs had to be low in quality, but he was asking how to create high-resolution gifs that he's seen.
Oh, and by the way, for post number 3, you can find the original picture at
http://www.bungie.net/images/Games/Halo2/s..._mp_warlock.jpg
Its much larger, because photobucket.com resized my image.