1. A method comprising: accessing header information from a multi-resolution codestream of compressed data of a first image; deriving one or more retrieval attributes solely from a bit distribution extracted from the header information; and performing image analysis based on the one or more retrieval attributes from the bit distribution extracted from header information, wherein the one or more retrieval attributes are non-image data that describe visual attributes of the first image, wherein the image analysis comprises similarity matching or clustering between the first image and a second image.