New York-based digital art site Zymmetrical has added a new search option. It allows users to find images with a designated area of blank or clutter-free space for adding text, logos and other layout elements. Founder and CEO Keith Tuomi said tthis Freerange feature, in combination with tools like Zymmetrical's color picker, helps buyers who know what they want find it faster.

Established in 2006, Zymmetrical crafted a business model that borrows from companies like Veer and SnapVillage (both now owned by Corbis), but adds its own twist. Zymmetrical bills itself as a user-generated marketplace for royalty-free photography, video, fonts and graphics. It allows contributors to set their own prices in the range of $3 to $100, and to change such prices at any time.

It is also available in eight languages and is the first to offer buyers tools, like the free Firefox plug-in, which allows searching the Zymmetrical collection from the toolbar in much the same way Google handles its in-browser search.

The founders of Zymmetrical also put principles over technology. Under the tagline of "fair trade and new tools," the new business defines a fair-trade approach to crowd-sourcing with paying its contributors 70% of sales. Despite repeated promises from Zooomr, this commission remains the highest in the business, exceeding microstock-segment leaders by multiples.

Zymmetrical has yet to gather enough feedback on microstock forums to obtain a revenue ranking, but contributors are reacting positively to the small number of sales generating significant earnings. FeaturePics, an older site that also pays 70%, enjoys a similarly positive reputation and demonstrates an upward trend in contributor earnings.

SnapVillage is also on an upward trend, and figures from Alexa Internet put Zymmetrical slightly higher than the Corbis microstock in terms of site traffic during December through January. Zymmetrical management says traffic doubles every six months.