Epson scanner not work with Mountain Lion?

Question

I have an Epson Expressio 1600Pro scanner with transparency adaptor. It has worked perfectly with previous Macs using OSX 10.4. I have recently bought a MacBook pro and upgraded it to OSX 10.8. I went to Epson's website to get a new driver etc. That tells you it can only be downloaded via Mac Software Update. That was duly done and installed. System prefs lists it under printer and scanners. OK
I have also installed Photoshop Elements 11 and expected to be able to scan direct to there but nothing seems possible. Going to Help says use Image capture or Preview. Yes! there is a small very rudimentary scanning window appears in both apps. Now the problem! Nothing happens. I have tried ALL the various meagre settings on offer, changing size, resolution, custom etc and all that happens is a small rectangle of a scan occurs but no resulting file.
I have been on to Epson who say ONLY image capture will work with 10.8 but as it is a 3rd party software they can offer no assistance. Well image capture does NOT work. I have spent all afternoon trying various things like restarting, unplugging, reconnecting etc etc nothing.
10.8 does seem very buggy. I have even had to stop using Mail and Safari simply because it doesn't work whereas Thunderbird and Firefox work very well.
But I digress, does anyone have any thoughts please?

Answer 1

The following comments are based on installing an Epson RX700 All-in-one printer/copier/scanner so they may not be applicable to you but, for what it's worth here they are. The RX700 scanner worked perfectly with Snow Leopard and then Lion but, when I changed to Mountain Lion, and used the app store to download and install the drivers, I lost the Epson scanner utility (ie. the user interface that gives you all the scanner options).
However, if I used System Preferences and then the Print and Scan option, it brought up a small window where I could select either Print or Scan. Selecting Scan or Open Scanner from this window then opens up a window with all the scanner options in it, including an overview scan. This window has the option to either Hide Details (all the detailed scanner options - resolution, size, output file name etc) or Show them. As far as I can see, this window is actually the Image Capture app, although it doesn't say so.
It might be a long shot but try changing the Auto Selection box in this window to one of the other options (eg. "Detect Separate Items") or setting the "Scan to" to a file.