In this paper, a simple and fast querying method for content-based image retrieval is represented. Using the multispectral gradient, a color image is split into two disjoint parts that are the homogeneous color regions and the edge regions. The homogeneous regions are represented by the traditional color histograms, and the edge regions are represented by the multispectral gradient module mean histograms. In order to measure the similarity degree between two color images both quickly and effectively, we use a one-dimensional pseudo-metric, which makes use of the one-dimensional Daubechies decomposition and compression of the extracted histograms. Our querying method is invariant to the query color image object translations and color intensities. The experimental results are reported on a collection of 10,000 LAB color images.