Color image segmentation is widely used methods for searching of homogeneous regions to classify them into various groups. Clustering is one technique that is used for this purpose. Clustering algorithms have drawbacks such as the finding of optimum centers within a cluster and the trapping in local optima. Even though inspired meta-heuristic algorithms have been adopted to enhance the clustering performance, some algorithms still need improvements. Whale optimization algorithm (WOA) is recognized to be enough competition with common meta-heuristic algorithms, where it has an ability to obtain a global optimal solution and avoid local optima. In this paper, a new method for color image based segmentation is proposed based on using whale optimization algorithm in clustering. The proposed method is called the whale color image based segmentation (WhCIbS). It was used to divide the color image into a predefined number of clusters. The input image in RGB color space was converted into L*a*b color space. Comparison of the proposed WhCIbS method was performed with the wolf color image based segmentation, cuckoo color image based segmentation, bat color image based segmentation, and k-means color image based segmentation over four benchmark color images. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed WhCIbS had higher value of PSNR and lower value of RMSR in most cases compared to other methods.