Nero Kwik Media: a photo and video manager with its own 'app store'

It seems as though everyone wants to launch their own ‘app stores' at the moment, following the success of Apple's App Store for the iPhone and iPad.

There's the App Market for Android phones and tablets, and Intel has a store for netbook apps. Now Nero has added an app collection to its new Kwik Media product, which is essentially a media management and photo-editing program.

The basic Kwik Media is a free download from the Nero website, and includes simple features for organising music, photos and video files. You can create photo slideshows and use the program to play video files or burn audio CDs.

There are some simple photo-editing tools too, providing the ability to crop pictures, adjust brightness, colour and exposure - and the obligatory red-eye removal. These editing features are straightforward and simple to use, but they're fairly limited and certainly can't match the powerful photo-editing features found in commercial software such as Adobe's Photoshop Elements.

However, clicking the Nero Store button allows users to expand the program by buying and downloading apps to provide additional features.

Prices start at just 99p for the Kwik Faces app, which adds face-recognition that can be used to locate specific people within your photo library. For £5 you can buy the Kwik Move It app that helps move music, photos and video files between your PC and a variety of mobile devices - such as an iPod or a mobile phone - that might normally be incompatible with each other.

Prices go right up to £30 for the Kwik Blu-ray app which adds the ability to watch Blu-ray movies to the computer, though you will of course require a Blu-ray disc drive to make use of this.

The ability to buy inexpensive apps that provide just the features you need is quite appealing, so it's definitely worth downloading the free version of Kwik Media to see what's on offer (click here to see a full list of apps available in Nero Kwik Media).

Given that it lacks some of the advanced tools found in other programs, we'd still recommend checking out other free rivals, such as Microsoft's Windows Live Photo Gallery before breaking out your credit card.