Abstract: The complementary nature of low-level light image intensifiers and thermal infrared cameras makes them possible to observe the scene under almost any conditions (day/night/smoke/fog). A color fusion method of low-level-light and infrared images was introduced to render multiband imagery in comparative realistic color appearance. Firstly, the center-surround opponent-color fusion scheme was used to yield color imagery. Next, the histograms of the image were matched to those of the reference image in YCbCr color space. This transfered the natural color characteristics of daylight imagery into multispectral night vision images. In order to enhance the contrast of the fused imagery, a grayscale fused image was used to replace the luminance component of the multiband imagery and then implement the histogram matching. The experiment results demonstrate the proposed method is effective in displaying the fused imagery in natural colors and popping out targets. This fused data can help observers or machine vision systems to process this type of images efficiently, therefore reducing detection and recognition times and improving situational awareness.