IMAGE PROCESSING APPARATUS FOR COMPARING IMAGES BASED ON COLOR FEATURE INFORMATION AND COMPUTER PROGRAM PRODUCT IN A MEMORY

An image data processing apparatus for comparing images based on color feature information of images. The image data processing apparatus has a color group sorting table that stores information for sorting colors to a plurality of color groups. The image data processing apparatus counts color elements of each pixel of the image for every color group with reference to the color group sorting table. The image data processing apparatus obtains a representative color of each color group based on values of the color elements of pixels in every color group and an occupancy ratio of pixels counted for every color group to all pixels of the image, thereby extracts the color feature of the image. The image data processing apparatus compares images based on the color feature and searches desired images from an image database.