Why there is no overall winner
A denoised picture measures smoother and less sharp; a sharpened one measures crisper and noisier. Neither is “better” without knowing what it is for, so the Quality view reports each measure separately and writes sentences like “Image B has higher measured sharpness, while Image A has fewer clipped highlights.”
Measurements are taken after both pictures are placed in the same frame, so a larger file is not credited with detail merely for having more pixels. The file-level numbers — dimensions, file size, bits per pixel, the JPEG quality the quantisation tables suggest — are reported separately.
The sharpness map
Turn on the sharpness overlay to see, cell by cell, where each picture holds fine detail. “Inspect the sharpest difference” jumps to the cell where the two disagree most, at a zoom where you can judge it yourself.
Colour, side by side
Overlaid luminance and RGB histograms, the dominant colours of each picture with their share, the average colour, and a summary of the shift in plain words — warmer, cooler, lighter, more saturated — with the mean ΔE between aligned pixels.
Questions people ask
›Which one is sharper?
Compare the Sharpness and Edge strength rows. Both are higher for crisper detail. Check the Noise row too: noise raises both numbers without adding real detail.
›How is JPEG quality estimated?
From the file's own luminance quantisation table, matched against the standard libjpeg table at every quality from 1 to 100. Encoders that use custom tables will produce an approximate figure.