In this paper, we propose a new image retrieval algorithm using the block classification. More specifically, we classify nonoverlappint small image blocks into texture, monotone, and various edges. Using these classification results and the RGB color histogram, we propose a new similarity measure which considers both local and global fretures. According to our experimental results using 232 color images, the retrieval efficiencies of the proposed and the previous methods were 0.610 and 0.522, respectively, which implies that the proposed algorithm yields better performance.