Hello, I know that the hot-key to hide the palettes is Shift-Tab.  However, I've noticed if I show the palettes, go into the layers, and mess with opacity or something like that, when I do the hot-key, it doesn't hide the palettes.  Then I have to click around before it'll work again.  It's just kinda' annoying, is there a way around this?

Just click once on the workspace.