Saving large figures to .pdf in matlab using export_fig.m

I'm using export_fig.m (https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/23629-export_fig) to export a figure to a variety of formats including .pdf.

To comment on the size of the figure I'm working with, the .fig which is saved is about 200 MB.

I'm using r2018b on a W10 OS.

Using the painters renderer option for export_fig (which produces a considerably crisper resulting graphic) causes matlab to become unresponsive.

The same thing happens if I try to write the figure to an .eps with the painters renderer option.

I haven't let my system run for more than 10 minutes. I suppose it is possible that more time is simply needed.

Moving to the opengl renderer (from painters) solves the problem. The zbuffer renderer option is also a solution and results in a similar output to that obtained with opengl.

The axes labels are observably less crisp when I implement the above two solutions. I'm still not quite satisfied. I would like to achieve the best possible fully vector graphics output. Any knowledge and tricks are greatly appreciated

This may be a relevant post: https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/180563-print-figure-to-pdf-file-size-too-large