Fastest way to get a photo from iPhone to Mac?
Photo Stream isn't actually as bad as it seems. You don't need to launch iPhoto to get the photo — it's already on your Mac and much faster than it appears in iPhoto.

Your Photo Stream is stored in:

~/Library/Application Support/iLifeAssetManagement/assets/sub


Go to this folder and sort by date. Inside those folders are JPGs of all your photos.

You can create a smart folder to only show JPGs sorted by date modified which gives you an automatic updating folder of your pictures. Drag this smart folder to your Dock for immediate, real-time access.