Recently determined complete sets of materials parameters describing the dielectric, elastic, piezoelectric, elasto-optic, and electro-optic properties of BaTiO3 and KNbO3 crystals at room temperature are used to calculate the effective electro-optic coefficients and dielectric constants required for describing photorefractive phenomena. We show a substantial deviation of the new values from the electro-optic coefficients for homogeneously applied electric fields that were used previously in describing the photorefractive effects. We derive angular dependences of the effective electro-optic coefficients and the effective dielectric constants relevant for grating recording in both crystals and verify them experimentally.