An embodiment of the present disclosure provides a method for enhancing a fingerprint image, identifying a fingerprint, and starting-up a application program. The method for enhancing the fingerprint image includes: removing a background texture of a fingerprint image of a current frame to obtain a pure fingerprint image; performing a first preprocessing on the pure fingerprint image to obtain a first pre-processed image; obtaining an effective area of the first pre-processed image; performing direction field estimation and direction field correction on the effective area; and performing a second pre-processing on the effective area after direction field correction to obtain an enhanced fingerprint image. With the solution of this embodiment, the number of fingerprint collections is reduced, the quality of fingerprint images is improved, the complexity of fingerprint collection is reduced, the efficiency of fingerprint unlocking is improved, and the user experience is improved.