I recently had a problem where I was opening files in one folder, manipulating them in an application, and then saving them in a different folder. But every time I went to save, the target folder for saving was the folder I opened the file in. I then had to click 7 times to get to the folder that I wanted to save the files in. Needless to say, this got old real quick.

So the shortcut I came up with was to put the target folder in the sidebar of my Finder (by opening the Finder and just dragging the folder into the sidebar). After doing this, the folder showed up in the sidebar of the Save dialog and I could get there in one click. When I was done, I then removed the folder from the sidebar (by right-clicking on it in the sidebar and selecting "Remove From Sidebar".

This real made my task a lot quicker. Why this is specific to the Finder in the Mac, I suspect you could do a similar thing in Windows.