Purpose: In image segmentation via thresholding, Otsu and Kapur methods have been widely used because of their effectiveness and robustness. However, computational complexity of these methods grows exponentially as the number of thresholds increases due to the exhaustive search characteristics. Methods: Particle swarm optimization (PSO) and genetic algorithms (GAs) can accelerate the computation. Both methods, however, also have some drawbacks including slow convergence and ease of being trapped in a local optimum instead of a global optimum. To overcome these difficulties, we proposed two new multi-level thresholding methods based on Bacteria Foraging PSO (BFPSO) and real-coded GA algorithms for fast segmentation. Results: The results from BFPSO and real-coded GA methods were compared with each other and also compared with the results obtained from the Otsu and Kapur methods. Conclusions: The proposed methods were computationally efficient and showed the excellent accuracy and stability. Results of the proposed methods were demonstrated using four real images.