Abstract: To solve the problem of quick identification of typical wood veneers, color images of common decorative veneers were studied using color histogram as quantitative index of veneer colors, and image retrieval techniques of wood veneers in terms of RGB, HSV and Gray color spaces were investigated based on the algorithm of correlation coefficient, in order to develop a new wood veneer recognition technique based on image comparison allowing for simplification of the recognition process. Result showed that the color histogram could be used for retrieving and recognizing wood veneers once the basic image database of the common wood species veneer was set up. The histogram retrieval accuracies of RGB and HSV are better than Gray histogram, and the accuracy of the first two is 99%, but the latter is only 88%. The selection of representative images of wood species in the basic database is an important factor which affects the retrieval accuracy. Moreover, the selected representative image of each species should contain its maximum color difference, differing significantly from other species.