OK, good. Open the Photo Mechanic Settings dialog (Photo Mechanic->Settings...). Then navigate to the "Render Cache" page using the popup menu in the upper left area of the Settings dialog.
You have two choices for RAW rendering. If you use Adobe products to adjust your RAW photos, I recommend downloading and installing the free Adobe DNG Converter from
https://adobe.com/ and then choosing the Adobe DNG Converter as your renderer. Otherwise you can choose the Apple ImageIO engine as your RAW renderer.
For the When rendering images popup menu, you have three choices:
- Always render RAW photos
- Only render RAW photos on demand
- Render RAW when embedded preview is small
The third option will automatically take care of your zooming resolution issue. However, if you find that you're not zooming into all of your previews, the second option (on demand) may make more sense. You can press the key assigned to the "Toggle Render Quality" command (Q is the default keyboard assignment) and the image will be rendered as RAW. You can do this in the Contact Sheet (thumbnail grid view) and in the Preview window.
HTH,
-Kirk
