Actions are a great way to accelerate your Photoshop workflow, but clicking though the actions panel to choose the one you want can be a hassle. I recently decided to streamline the process even further by assigning keyboard shortcuts to my most used actions.

Assigning the shortcuts is easy, the option is just buried in the Photoshop actions menu.

To get started, fire up PS (I’m using CS3) and click the actions tab. Choose the action that you want to assign the shortcut to then click the tiny arrow (expertly circled in the image on the left) to open the actions menu. Then choose Action Options. This brings up a window where you can choose the F-key you want to use. You can also specify if you want to make use of the CTRL and/or Shift keys for your shortcut. Click OK and you’re done.

Now you can fire off actions without having to aim your mouse. It scores points for boosting both speed and laziness - a win-win situation.