1. A method of searching a plurality of stored objects comprising the steps of: generating with a segmentation and feature extraction unit a collection of real-valued multi-dimensional vectors representing each said object, each of said multi-dimensional vectors having an associated weight; converting when executed by a disk each of said multi-dimensional vectors into a sketch using a thresholding and transformation algorithm and storing said sketch in a database to produce a collection of sketches corresponding to each object, wherein each said sketch comprises a bit vector that is more compact than a real-valued multi-dimensional vector from which said sketch is converted; and finding objects closest to a query object with a similarity search engine, wherein said similarity search engine finds said objects closest to said query object based upon said sketches stored in said database.