A content-based image retrieval system is designed and implemetned using the color featurees which are histogram intersection and color pairs. The preprocessor for the image retrieval manage linearly the existing HSI(hue, saturation, saturation, intensity). Hue and intensity histogram thresholding for each color attribute is performed to split the chromatic and achromatic regions respectively. Grouping te indexes produced by the histogram intersection is used to save the retrieval times. Each image is divided into the cells of 32$ imes$32 pixels, and color pairs are used to represent the query during retrievals. The recall/precision of histogram intersection is 0.621/0.663 and recall/precision of color pairs is 0.438/0.536. And recall/precision of proposed method is 0.765/0.775/. It is shown that the proposed method using histogram intersection and color pairs improves the retrieval rates.