  The photon -- induced interactions, present in $ep$, $eA$, $pp$, $pA$, $AA$
and $e^+ e^-$ collisions, are expressed within the color dipole approach in
terms of the photon wave function, which describes the transition of the photon
into a quark -- antiquark color dipole. Such quantity is usually calculated
using perturbation theory assuming that long distance corrections associated to
strong interactions can be neglected. In this paper we investigate the impact
of these nonperturbative QCD (npQCD) corrections to the description of the
photon wave function for dipoles of large size in several observables measured
at HERA, LEP and LHC. We assume a phenomenological ansatz for the treatment of
these npQCD corrections and constrain the free parameters of our model using
the experimental data for the photoproduction cross section. The predictions
for the $\gamma \gamma$ cross section, exclusive $\rho$ production in $ep$
collisions and the rapidity distribution for the $\rho$ production in $PbPb$
collisions are compared with the data. We demonstrate that the inclusion of the
nonperturbative QCD corrections improves the description of processes that are
dominated by large dipoles.
