One of the important technologies for image processing is image segmentation. The complexity of image content is still a big challenge for carrying out automatic image segmentation. A lot of work shows that the user guidance can help to define the desired content to be extracted and thus reduce the ambiguities produced by the automatic methods. A brief overview of some of the most common segmentation techniques, and a comparison between them comprise this literature review. Image segmentation is the fundamental step to analyze images and extract data from them. It is the field widely researched and still offers various challenges for the researchers. This paper tries to put light on the basic principles on the methods used to segment an image. This paper concentrates on the idea behind the basic methods used. Image segmentation can be broadly be categorized as semi-interactive approach and fully automatic approach and the algorithms developed lies in either of this approaches. Image segmentation is a crucial step as it directly influences the overall success to understand the image. In this project the system discusses the various segmentation techniques for pixel based image segmentation, region based image segmentation, edge based image segmentation, and graph based image segmentation. Among different segmentation techniques, interactive graph cuts have several good features in practical applications.