Turning photos into a painting?

[LifeInAHamsterWheel]

As a family gift, I'd like to get a painting of all the grandchildren. They are in various countries so it's not possible to get them together in person. We don't even have a photo of them together at any time. I know there are places that turn photos into 'paintings' I'm wondering if there's a way of using individual photos of each child and ending up with a painting (or drawing) that looks like they've all posed together? Or even photo shop the images to make it look like a photo of them all together? If anyone can recommend a person or company that can do that sort of thing that would be great!

if you are on Facebook there are a few sites on there where people will do this for you for free. just post your photos of the individual people and explain what you would like and some kind person will put them together for you to create one photo. it's often people that are training and getting into photography editing or some just like to do for a hobby. look at free photo editing on there. I was not a Facebook user but made an account as someone told me about these free photo editing pages.

Could you contact a local artist / University art grad that could actually do a proper painting .
I accept it will be mors expensive but hopefully the result will be better

Thanks for the suggestions I'll look into both

there is a website called fivr which has graphic designers / photoshop experts who will do small jobs like this for reasonable pay.

you need to start out with photos that have similar lighting - if child A is in bright sunshine casting strong shadows on their face and child B is in a dim room with even lighting, it will be impossible to get the composite photo to look sensible.

there are also ways to print your final composite photo so that it looks like a painting.

I would not ask an art student to do it for free because it could take them 10-50 hours of work which is not fair. Or they will do a hasty job and the end result will look like that.