Affinity Designer Pixel persona tools only accessible through editing brushes?

[Daisybell]

I’m new to the ipad version of affinity Designer 2, I’ve only used V1 for Mac. So I’m still getting used to where everything is. Today when editing a brush in the pixel persona, I noticed that I can change the tool type, and this included tools that were not visible in the UI, e.g median, clone, paint mixer etc. 

What I don’t understand is why these tools are not accessible through the UI toolbar?
I feel like I’m going crazy because I can’t find any posts mentioning them for Affinity Designer, only for Photo, and they’re not in any of the guides.
I’ve found that the smudge tool doesn’t work correctly, it pulls random colours and looks very blocky and unnatural. However, the paint mixer and median tools have done the job and I will probably use them instead, but I don’t want to have to edit a brush every single time.
It seems so odd to hide these tools like this and I’m not sure if I’m just missing something really obvious 😅 but I’ve spent hours looking.

Is there a way to manually add them to the UI so I don’t have to keep editing brushes every time I want to use one? 
Thanks!

[walt.farrell]

Brushes can be exported as .afbrush files, and the files are compatible with both Designer (Pixel Persona) and Photo (Photo Persona). Thus, you could create a brush in Photo that is associated with the Clone Brush Tool, or the Smudge Brush Tool, etc. and it would be usable in Photo. You could then export a .afbrush file containing the brush, and import it into Designer to use it.

At that point, if you were to Edit the brush in Designer, you would want to know what Tool it is associated with, and perhaps change it.

That should explain why those are in the brush editing UI, though they are not in the main UI.

However, in my brief testing so far, if I choose a Brush in the Designer Pixel Persona that refers to a tool that doesn't exist, the UI switches away from the Brush Tool and doesn't paint at all. 

 

[Daisybell]

I was worried this might be the answer, it just seemed strange that a ‘paint mixer’ tool would be in photo and not designer. Thanks for clearing that up for me!

There have been a few times they’ve not worked for me, but I’ve found that it has something to do with the tool you’re in when you select the brush. For example the sharpen tool only works if you are in eraser when you select it. They all seem to do what they’re supposed to, but I’ve not used photo v2 so I’m not sure if it’s exactly the same outcome when used in the correct app.
That’s a shame though, I’ve been fighting with the smudge tool for days and then the paint mixer did the job in seconds. I’m surprised the smudge tool is so glitchy when the Photo tools are so much better, even when I’m not supposed to be able to use them 😅 but I guess that’s a glitch in itself.