The most popular technique for image retrieval in a heterogeneous collection of color images is the comparison of images based on their color histogram. The color histogram describes the distribution of colors in the color space of a color image. In the most image retrieval systems, the color histogram is used to compute similarities between the query image and all the images in a database. But, small changes in the resolution, scaling, and illumination may cause important modifications of the color histogram, and so two color images may be considered to be very different from each other even though they have completely related semantics. A new method of color feature representation based on the 3-dimensional RGB color map is proposed to improve the defects of the color histogram. The proposed method is based on the three 2-dimensional projection map evaluated by projecting the RGB color space on the RG, GB, and BR surfaces. The experimental results reveal that the proposed is less sensitive to small changes in the scene and that achieve higher retrieval performances than the traditional color histogram.