e umlaut in imagettftext

[merijnvw]

I can't find a working method for this.
I want to write an e umlaut(ë , U+00EB , c3 ab) with PHP gd using imagettftext. How can I do this? Thanks.

[astupidname]

Named entities apparently don't work with imagettftext, but numeric ones do:

$umlautCharacters = '¨ Ä Ë Ï Ö Ü ä ë ï ö ü';