Content-based means that the search analyzes the contents of the image rather than the metadata such as keywords, tags, or descriptions associated with the image. In our project we make use of color feature retrieval using histogram. the main objective of this project is to analyze the current state of the art in content-based image retrieval(CBIR) using Image Processing in MATLAB Different implementations of CBIR make use of different types of user queries. The underlying search algorithms may vary depending on the application, but result images should all share common elements with the provided example. Color histograms are widely used for content-based image retrieval. Their advantages are insensitivity to small changes in camera view point. However, a histogram is a coarse characterization of an image, and so images with very different appearances can have similar histograms. We describe a technique for comparing images called histogram renement which imposes additional constraints on histogram based matching. Histogram renement split the pixels in a given bucket into several classes, based upon some local property.