A low illumination image enhancement algorithm based on adaptive color correction and guided filtering is proposed to address the issues of dim brightness and severe detail loss in low illumination images. Firstly, an adaptive color restoration algorithm with detail enhancement is used to process the color pixel values of the original image to obtain a color balanced image; Convert the color equalization image components from RGB to HSV, and enhance the H, S, and V components separately; Using the histogram equalization CLAHE algorithm to enhance the contrast of the H component; By reconstructing the improved fractional order differential operator of the first n coefficients, the S-component is convolved, and then the processed S-component is subjected to saturation adaptive nonlinear correction; The improved Retinex algorithm based on the joint weighting of bilateral filtering and guided filtering as a new center surround function is used to enhance the V component; Finally, the enhanced hue, saturation, and brightness are fused and converted into RGB to output the final result image. The experimental results show that the algorithm proposed in this paper has good advantages in various data indicators. Compared to other algorithms, this algorithm enhances the overall details of the image while ensuring color balance, thereby enhancing the overall visual effect. Both subjective and objective data analysis of the human eye show that the enhanced image has better visual effects than existing image enhancement algorithms.