Inking with photoshop?

I am fairly familiar with photoshop, and use it often to ink and color pictures. However, I see other peoples work and their lines are more natural and not as heavy of a black. How can I achieve this? Is it a layer setting? I tried changing the opacity and it looks like garbage. I hope you know what I mean. For instance, here is my piece http://trapster-six-zero.deviantart.com/...

And I want lines like this one http://lasaro.deviantart.com/art/world-o...

See how they appear more natural while mine are heavy?

Any small tips or links to tutorials would be appreciated, as it is bugging me!! Thanks!!

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Assuming that the second sample was, actually, created entirely in the computer, then, I'd have to agree that a graphics tablet would give you the flexibility you seek. With that, not only can you select a line thicness, but Photoshop allows you to program the tablet's pressure sensitivity, so that harder pressure can give you a thicker bolder line. You can also switch from a hard edged pen or pencil line, to a softer brush like stroke.

Of course, that, second example may be a paper drawing that was scanned into the computer. It's a technique I use a LOT.

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I can think of one thing, and that is using a graphics tablet. One of the things about a tablet is that the pen you use is pressure sensitive, so more like using a real world media brush or pen and ink rather than digital, it changes the line as you work depending on how much pressure you apply. If you look at the brush settings in photoshop you will see things like airbrush and pressure settings, tilt and rotation. Those are all settings for using a tablet and the tools that work with the tablet. In other words, working with a tablet is closer to working with ''natural'' media, and as you get better with the tablet, your work looks more natural.

Hope that helps!
What the first person says sounds like a great idea.

Beyond that... it definitely looks like, to me, a specific brush, but not quiet sure what. Maybe they did use what the first person suggested, it does look like awfully natural strokes that would be hard to get using a mouse.