A system and method for comparing and searching for digital data, such as images, using histograms includes receiving a source image, receiving a comparison image, generating a first histogram for the source image and generating a second histogram for the comparison image. The source image may be received from a network device, such as a computer or camera, and the comparison image may one of a plurality of stored images in a database. The histograms may correspond to an image characteristic, including a color histogram corresponding to the distribution of the intensity of a corresponding color among image pixels in the source image. Each of first and second histograms is normalized and a similarity score is calculated between the two histograms. The similarity score represents a similarity measure between the two histograms, calculated from a subset of bins, which are independently selected for each image.