When applying traditional image enhancement algorithm to low illumination images with uneven illumination distribution,it is easy to produce color distortion and over enhancement of bright areas. To resolve theses problems,an adaptive enhancement algorithm of low illumination image based on maximum difference image was proposed. Firstly,the concept of maximum difference image was proposed,and the initial illumination component was roughly estimated by the maximum difference image. Secondly,the method of alternating guided filtering was proposed,which was used to correct the initial illumination component,so as to realize the accurate estimation of illumination component. Finally,the Gamma transform was designed for image brightness adaptivity,which was able to adaptively adjust the Gamma transform parameters according to the acquired illumination components,thus,the influence of uneven illumination was eliminated while enhancing the image. Experimental results show that the enhanced image effectively eliminates the influence of uneven illumination distribution,the brightness,contrast,detail performance and color fidelity of the image are significantly improved,the average gradient increases by more than one time,and the information entropy increases by more than 14%. Because the proposed algorithm estimates the light component accurately,and the adaptive Gamma transform is optimized for low illumination images,so that the proposed algorithm has very effective enhancement effect for color images under weak light conditions like night.