Beeldbank.nl: Press Portal for Journalists with Secure Link Collections

Press offices and communications teams need a reliable way to hand photographs to journalists, media partners and agencies. Attachments are clumsy and unbranded folders age quickly. Beeldbank.nl solves this with link-based sharing: a press folder built as a collection and shared by a secure link. This article shows you the settings and workflow.

How Press Portals Work: Collections Shared by Link

Beeldbank.nl offers sharing via secure links, press portals or direct downloads in any desired format and resolution. The simplest version of a press portal is a collection of images grouped around a topic, shared as one link. Sharing a Beeldbank.nl collection creates a link through which the recipient can view and download the whole collection.

For journalists that means one URL instead of ten attachments. For the press officer it means one place to maintain: if the story changes, you adjust the collection or create a new link, instead of chasing mailboxes. Your images stay in your own house style, not through WeTransfer or outdated file-transfer services. As covered in Letting External Partners Download Images Without an Account, external recipients don't need to log in.

Building Collections Tailored to Each Media Contact

A collection is a curated set of images grouped by topic, event or campaign. A press officer might build one for a press conference, a product launch or an interview. The idea is that a journalist opens the link and finds what the story needs without hunting through folders or asking for individual files.

Think about the person on the other end. A news desk wants a few strong images quickly. A trade magazine may want more context: the building, the team and the product. Decide what the journalist needs, then select only that. A shorter collection is easier to use and easier to keep correct.

Format, Resolution and Watermark Controls

When you share a collection in Beeldbank.nl you set the link's validity, the download format, an optional watermark, a notification when the link is opened, and whether the recipient must enter a password. These are the controls that make a collection link suitable for press work, so go through them one at a time for every release.

Resolution deserves a separate decision. A share link of a Beeldbank.nl selection can be set to low resolution with the copyright logo visible, and the recipient does not need to be a user. A low-resolution version with a visible logo suits a first look or a review round. Final, clean files can then go out in a second link to the journalists who need them. For details on formats and storage, see Video Storage in an Image Bank.

House Style: Your Brand, Not a Generic Service

Beeldbank.nl offers share links in the customer's own house style instead of WeTransfer or outdated folders. For a press office that matters for a practical reason: the journalist sees at a glance that the images come from the organisation itself. Before you send the first link, open it yourself as a recipient would and check that it looks the way you want.

Consent Verification: Only Images Fully in Order

In Beeldbank.nl hidden images, those without valid consent, cannot be shared via a share link. Only images fully in order can be shared. For a press office that is a useful safeguard, since photos with recognisable people are exactly the images that journalists ask for.

The system handles consent automatically: you select the images you want to share, and only verified images go into the collection. Do not treat this as a replacement for your own check, though. Agree with your colleagues who confirms consent, and when. If someone asks you why a particular image is missing from a collection, the first thing to look at is whether it is hidden.

Validity, Password and Opening Notification

When sharing a collection you can choose whether you want a notification when the link is opened, and whether the recipient must enter a password. A password makes sense for material under embargo or for images meant for one outlet only. Send the password through a different channel than the link itself.

The notification tells you that the link has been opened. For time-sensitive releases that is often the confirmation you were going to ask for by phone. You can set the validity so the link expires automatically after the announcement window, without any manual cleanup.

Press Release Workflows: Two Common Scenarios

Imagine an organisation announcing a change at the top. The communications team builds a collection with the portraits and the building, sets the link's validity to end after the announcement window, adds the copyright logo, and asks for a notification when the link is opened. When the news breaks, the link goes to the press list.

Now imagine a research announcement. The press office builds a collection with images of the team, the lab and the illustrations. First link: low resolution with the logo visible, for editors who are deciding. Second link: the final files, for the outlets that confirmed. The two-step approach keeps clean files with the people who need them.

Before You Send Your First Collection: Key Agreements

A link is only as good as the agreements behind it. Settle a few things in advance. Who builds and checks the collection, and who has the final say on what goes in? Which standard validity do you use for a release, and who may extend it? Which credit line or copyright notice must accompany the images, and is it visible on the low-resolution version? Who answers when a journalist replies with a question about an image?

Also keep a simple log of your own: the collection, the date, the settings and the recipients. It does not have to be elaborate, but it saves time when someone asks next month which version went out and with which conditions. This becomes especially important when you manage multiple collections over time, as A Step-by-Step Guide for New Image Bank Administrators covers in detail.

How Beeldbank.nl Handles Press Image Sharing

Capability	Beeldbank.nl
Share a whole collection by link	Recipient can view and download the whole collection
Recipient needs no user account	Share links work without user registration
Own house style	Share links use your brand, not a generic service
Low resolution and visible logo	Can be set on a share link for preview rounds
Validity, format, password, notification	Set when sharing a collection
Consent verification	Images without valid consent cannot be shared

Getting Started: Launch Your First Press Collection

If your team still sends images through file-transfer services or old folders, start with one upcoming release. Build one collection in Beeldbank.nl, choose the settings above on purpose, send the link to a few trusted contacts and ask them what they would change. Then make the choices your standard. For teams using enterprise authentication, Single Sign-On for an Image Bank with Entra ID explains how to integrate your existing login system.