At last, a class for enthusiastic learners who are ready to dive into the world of Adobe Photoshop. Working on individual Mac computers, you’ll spend a fast-paced weekend exploring the fundamentals of this powerful image editing application. In this class, you will learn how to:

• Fix images by removing what’s not wanted and adding what wasn’t there before
• Apply quick and easy techniques to brighten, sharpen, and improve the color of your images
• Combine images in creative ways, replacing backgrounds and warping and reshaping image elements
• Enhance your images with silhouettes, vignettes, and drop shadows
• Understand color modes, file formats, and resolution

Ready to learn? This class, taught by Mara Sachs, will be held Saturday, September 6 & Sunday, September 7, 10 am-4 pm in Midtown West, NY. Visit the site to learn more and to register.

Golden Drum is open to agencies, advertisers, clients, design or production houses, TV houses, media or other parties involved in creation or production of marketing communication. There are twelve groups and even more subcategories involved in this competition, including Web, film and video and more. Remember that this is a competition for ads - therefore, the Festival reserves the right to request a full media schedule from each entrant company to verify the authenticity of the ad(s) in the event that entry is shortlisted or a winner.

The entry application is complicated, including special entries for “New Europe” competitors. The deadline, however, is very clear - 4 September 2008. Visit the site to learn more.

Online magazine SHIFT presents DOTMOV Festival 2008, a digital film festival aiming to discover talented creators and provide them with an opportunity to show their works. Works submitted from all over the world will be screened throughout the world venues from November 2008 (Date will be different depending on the venue). Last year’s total submission was 297 works from 34 countries. This year’s tour will be Sapporo, Sendai, Shizuoka, Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Fukuoka and Sao Paulo.

They will accept all work including prize-winning works or works submitted to other contests in Japan as well as in other countries. Submissions are accepted regardless of nationality and open to both professionals and amateurs. If some contests forbid sending your work to other contests, please respect their requirements. Animation, images, sounds, music, text and illustrations in your work should be original. However if the author give a permission to submit, it doesn’t have to be your original. Works submitted for the past edition of DOTMOV festival cannot be accepted.

Deadline is 20 September 2008. Visit the site to learn more.

The American Institute of Architects established the Thomas Jefferson Awards for Public Architecture to recognize achievements in the following three categories:

• Private-sector architects who have established a portfolio of accomplishment in the design of architecturally distinguished public facilities
• Public-sector architects who manage or produce quality design within their agencies
• Public officials or other individuals who by their role of advocacy have furthered the public’s awareness and/or appreciation of design excellence.

Each category carries specific details about entry. Submission Deadline: October 10, 2008. Visit the site to learn more.

Anima, the international animation festival, will take place February 20-29, 2009 at Flagey, Brussels in Belgium. Anima, Brussels Cartoon and Animated Film Festival, seeks to promote cartoons and animated films from all over the world. It also seeks to foster a dialogue between professionals, filmmakers and the public, and to raise awareness of quality animation among film and television distributors. The Festival is organizing an international competition as well as a national competition for films produced in Belgium; both competition are open to all animated films and make no distinction between formats or techniques, regardless of its geographic origin. Official categories: Short-film, Student film, Music videos and Commercials, Feature-film, Feature-film for children, Belgian shorts. There is no registration fee.

Deadline is 15 October 2008. Visit the site to learn more.

The aim of the WA Community Awards is to highlight and publish remarkable projects that might otherwise remain unnoticed by the international public but have the potential to inspire exciting questions about contemporary architectural discourse. Architects from ALL countries can submit ALL of their buildings (realized or not) for the appreciation of the WA Community. Recent projects (not older than 10 years) will have more chances to be shortlisted for the Awards. Students, landscape architects, engineers may also submit for the awards projects they are the author of: we do not check or accredit diplomas.

Projects submitted to the WA Portal until 24 October 2008 will be considered for the 2nd Cycle. All projects submitted earlier can be reconsidered if their pages are updated with significant new material by their architects. Visit the site to learn more.