First you will need a jpeg file of a sketch to start this tutorial. Quality and size aren't important since you'll be using this sketch as reference to trace over and then discarding it.

Open Macromedia Flash. You'll notice the layout is extremely different from Photoshop. If you don't know Flash very well, don't worry. There are only a few tools and techniques you need to use.

Time to get your sketch into Flash. Go to File>Import and find your sketch. You'll notice the program kind of arbitrarily drops it in the middle of the screen. It might appear to bleed over the white box. Don't worry, for some reason it actually doesn't matter at all. Just leave it where it is and don't resize it unless you want to.

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The main tool you will be using is the paintbrush tool. Make sure it's selected and click on the little brush stroke shape. That is pressure sensitivity. It will allow you to get varying widths and tapered ends with your tablet.

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Flash is a little strange and different in that your brush size stays consistent visually all the time but changes its actual size in relation to how much you're zoomed in. When you zoom in a lot in Photoshop, your 5 pixel brush will still be 5 pixels when you're zoomed in to 600% but it will appear much larger to compensate for the zoom. In Flash, your tiny size 1 brush will still appear tiny when you're zoomed way in, and will in fact draw an even tinier line that it would if you were zoomed out. This takes a little getting used to. To prevent my line weight from drastically changing as I work, I try to pick a zoom level and stay there throughout the duration of the inking job.

Now go to Insert>Layer. A new layer will appear in the Layers window (at the top of the screen) above your original Layer. Lock (by clicking on the dot on the layer under the padlock symbol) the bottom layer (probably named Layer 1) and select the top layer (Layer 2). You can name these (Sketch and Lines or something like that) if it makes it easier for you to tell them apart. To name them double click on the name like you would in Photoshop.

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Now, using the paint brush, try drawing a line. The nice thing about Flash is it doesn't matter if your line is not perfectly smooth.

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You can make the line smooth with a nifty little trick. First, you want to select the brush stroke you just made. This can be done several ways. If you are using a PC you can hold down Alt and drag a box around it (I'm not sure what the equivalent Mac shortcut is), or you can actually select the arrow tool manually to draw a box. Selected strokes will appear highlighted with little dots over them.

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Now go to Modify>Smooth. Do this multiple times until the line looks nice. It's like magic!

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Since going up there and clicking smooth over and over again can be a bit tedious, there's a little shortcut you can use to make your life much easier. First, go to Edit>Keyboard Shortcuts and a box with a bunch of options will appear. Depending on your version of Flash, this may be in a different place, but you want to click through the shortcut tree until you find "Smooth." In Flash MX, have the command "Drawing Menu Commands" selected and then go to Modify>Smooth. Click on the little plus (+) sign at the bottom above the empty white box and type in a keyboard shortcut of your choosing. I chose to use Ctrl+Shift+1. Click OK. Now every time you hit that keyboard shortcut, it will execute the smooth command.

You can make this even easier buy doing one last thing if you have a Wacom tablet. Open the Wacom Tablet Properties (for me, in Windows XP, it's under Start>All Programs>Wacom Tablet>Wacom Tablet Properties). You'll see some boxes at the top. Choose your current tablet (if there's more than one listed), choose "Stylus" under the Tool box, and then click the plus sign next to the Applications box. Since Flash is already open, you should be able to choose it from the "Currently Open Applications" list, if not, click Browse and find the program on your computer.

Click OK to go back to the main Properties box. Make sure Flash is selected in the Applications box. Click the Pen tab. On the right (it may be laid out differently depending on what driver version you are using) there is an image of the stylus pen with drop-down boxes and arrows pointing to the pen buttons. Click the drop down box pointing to the bottom side button (or the top if you prefer, but I like to save the top for Ctrl+Z for fast "Undos"). Select Keystroke from the menu. Click "Clear" when the box pops up. Type in Ctrl+Shift+1 (or whatever shortcut you chose) and click "OK." Now all you have to do is click that tablet button to smooth out your selected strokes. How convenient!

Back to inking. Sometimes you may run into a portion that you want to smooth, but the box selection method selects too much. For smaller or irregular selections, just use the lasso tool. You can see in the image below that if I drew a box with the arrow tool, it would pick up lines that I've already smoothed and don't want to touch again. With the lasso tool I can freely select non-geometric areas to smooth like that little eyelid crease.

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For the purpose of this tutorial and in the interest of time, I'm just going to stop at the head instead of doing the entire body. You will, of course, want to ink the whole thing.

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When you're finished with everything, save the Flash file in case you want to make any changes later. Then go back to the Layers window, select the bottom sketch layer, and click the little trash can to delete it.

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All you are left with is your clean lines now. Once again, don't worry if they go outside of the white box, when you export the artwork it will select the whole thing, not just the portions within the box.

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Go to File>Export Image. Save the image as an Adobe Illustrator (.ai) file. You have many save options that can be opened in Photoshop and maintain good quality, but I find AI works best (it also is what saves the whole image and keeps you from having to worry about lines going outside that white box).

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If this version dialogue box pops up, just choose the highest version listed.

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Now, close Flash and go back to Photoshop. Open the AI file that you just exported. A box will pop up. You can choose whatever image dimensions you want (I just left mine as is but you may want to make them bigger if this seems too small). Also make sure everything is set up like in my sample image. Once again, I recommend a resolution of 300 dpi.

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You may notice when you open your image that it's cropped right to the edge of the artwork. We obviously need to fix this.

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Go to Image>Canvas Size. Choose a larger size that you'd like, to give this image more breathing room.

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Now use the arrow tool to drag the image to whatever spot you want it within the larger canvas.

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Lastly, double click on the name of the layer (probably named Layer 1) in the layers window and change it to something like "Lines."

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Save the image as a PSD file. Now you have a set of inking on a separate layer ready to be colored!