Abstract-Interests to accurately retrieve required images from databases of digital images are growing day by day. Images are represented by certain features to facilitate accurate retrieval of the required images. These features include Texture, Color, Shape and Region. It is a hot research area and researchers have developed many techniques to use these feature for accurate retrieval of required images from the databases. In this paper we present a literature survey of the Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) techniques based on Texture, Color, Shape and Region. We also review some of the state of the art tools developed for CBIR.