Abstract: This paper attempts to discuss the evolution of the
retrieval techniques focusing on development, challenges and trends
of the image retrieval. It highlights both the already addressed and
outstanding issues. The explosive growth of image data leads to the
need of research and development of Image Retrieval. However,
Image retrieval researches are moving from keyword, to low level
features and to semantic features. Drive towards semantic features is
due to the problem of the keywords which can be very subjective and
time consuming while low level features cannot always describe high
level concepts in the users- mind.