rsync line was using poor syntax. Fixed.

asterisk in rsync source was wrong, removed.
exclude path should not be absolute but relative to source, fixed.
My change of var path_wd to path_thesis was done on a whim, hope it
doesn't make anything worse

chertex.sh

@@ -186,15 +186,15 @@ if [ $# -eq 1 ]; then
       # rsync can't do that. We need to use a different tool. See e.g.
       # https://superuser.com/questions/260092/rsync-switch-to-only-compare-timestamps
       # copy only the "large" photos that have file modtimes more recent than the last time this operation was run
-      photoslastrun="$path_wd/assets/photos/.lowres/lastrun"
+      photoslastrun="$path_thesis/assets/photos/.lowres/lastrun"
       if [ ! -f "$photoslastrun" ]; then
          # if, for some reason, the lastrun file does not exist
          # copy over everything and then create the file
-         rsync -av "$path_wd/assets/photos/*" "$path_wd/assets/photos/.lowres/" --exclude "$path_wd/assets/photos/.lowres/"
+         rsync -av "$path_thesis/assets/photos/" "$path_thesis/assets/photos/.lowres/" --exclude ".lowres/"
          touch "$photoslastrun"
       fi
       # cd and use --parents arg to preserve directory structure in .lowres target
-      cd "$path_wd/assets/photos"
+      cd "$path_thesis/assets/photos"
       newphotos="$(find . -type f -cnewer $photoslastrun ! -path './.lowres/*')"
       if [ -n "$newphotos" ]; then
          for newphoto in $newphotos; do
@@ -204,7 +204,7 @@ if [ $# -eq 1 ]; then
       # revert the effects of cd above. Redirect to null suppresses the output.
       cd - >/dev/null
       # in the low-res tree, find any photo larger than specific size (500kB)
-      largephotos="$(find $path_wd/assets/photos/.lowres/ -size +500k)"
+      largephotos="$(find $path_thesis/assets/photos/.lowres/ -size +500k)"
       for largephotofilename in $largephotos; do
          # for the next statement to work reliably, we should probably convert other formats to JPEG
          # detect file extension, and based on it, convert to jpg using mogrify