A new quantization method that uses the criterion of preserving sample absolute moments is presented. This is based on the same basic idea for block truncation coding of Delp and Mitchell but it is simpler in any practical implementation. Moreover, output equations are those for a two-level nonparametric minimum mean square error quantizer when the threshold is fixed to the sample mean. The application of this method to single frame color images is developed. A color image coding system that uses absolute moment block truncation coding of luminance and chroma information is presented. Resulting color images show reasonable performance with bit rates as low as 2.13 bits/pixel.