Abstract: A fusion method for infrared and visible light based on light enhancement is proposed to address the issues of uneven light distribution, low brightness, insufficient contrast, and missing detail information in low light visible light images and infrared images. In the lighting enhancement stage, the infrared image is first processed, and specific logarithmic and exponential functions are used to process the low and medium intensity pixel information of the image, enhancing the local contrast of the image. Secondly, the adaptive multi-scale Retinex algorithm is adopted to enhance the overall brightness of low illumination visible light images, improve the detailed feature information and texture of the images, and make them have good observability. Then, using gradient transfer and total variation minimization methods, the two enhanced images are fused and reconstructed to obtain the final fused image. Through experiments, it has been proven that the fused images obtained through this method have high contrast, uniform pixel distribution, clear detail features, and good visual appearance.