Driven by the demand of high resolution remote sensing applications,many optical remote sensing satellites with higher spatial resolution have been launched.But the extraction of the surface information from satellite image is also more and more affected by the worse atmopsheric conditions with the increase of sensor resolution.The atmospheric correction of optical remote sensing images is facing new situation and challenges due to new payload characteristics and upgraded application demands.Therefore a brief summary with simple analysis of the atmospheric correction methods is valuable.This paper introduces the current status and principle of atmospheric correction methods for optical remote sensing.According to the different approaches obtaining atmospheric parameters,these methods are classified into four catalogues,including the image graphical processing,the radiative transfer computing,the atmospheric parameters inversion from own-image,and the synchronous atmospheric corrector methods.At the end of this paper,with consideration of the development of Chinese high resolution satellites,the application status of atmospheric correction and future developments are discussed.